1&1 email service sucks

Problems with the service never stop. We are in the process of actually transferring 60+ sites from their servers. No easy task, especially with the sites being live,the clients trading from them, relying on the email service etc etc etc.

The easiest solution by far (we rather naively thought) is to repoint the sites to the new hosting, take the content across, reset the email addresses when the DNS updates and then transfer them.

Easy. Right?

Wrong.

After waiting for more than a week for two sites to update we got tired of it, decided to move on to transferring a couple of others and because the clients needed their email we repointed the sites back to 1&1 servers by choosing THE ONLY option on their control panel which says 1 & 1 servers.

You think that's simple. But no. The email addresses prompty failed with a 550 return message which translates to 'user not found'. We checked the email addresses (they exist), we chedked the passwords to access them (they matched).

So an email was fired off to the ridiculous customer service of an internet hosting company that deserves to go out of business:

Hi. On package XXXXX8 I have the domain rXXXXXXXe.com which I
have tried to repoint since Saturday night. Although repointing of DNS
servers takes a few hours at the most with the incredibly efficient
ultra-fast, customer-friendly service of 1 & 1 it takes the better part
of a week if you are lucky. Because the client could no longer wait I
reversed the domain (for now) back to the 1&1 servers. Trying to email
the client we receive a 550 5.1.1. error message (user unknown).
> The email addresses still exist and the passwords match and the
control panel at no time has indicated a DNS or an MX change.
> Can you please check to see WHY we are getting this message and it'd
better not be a canned response. The whole idea of using the 1&1 control
panel is that it is responsive and this IS NOT the case at the moment.
> David

I know the tone is a little frustrated but dealing with them was nightmare. Frustration doe snot even begin to describe how you feel after having had one problem with them, never mind a series of them.

In case you thought I was doing them an injustice in the content of my message here comes the reply like 10 minutes later by some employee who thinks he is being fantastically efficient by sending me this reply:

Thank you for contacting us.
With the error mesage you receive, " 550 5.1.1. error message (user
unknown).", you need to ask the recipient as this message indicates that
the email address is non existent.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
--
Sincerely,
Socrates Rallos
Technical Support
1&1 Internet

This guy's namesake was a philosopher. It could be true in this case, and Socrates is too busy pondering existential dilemmas to actually spend TWO minutes to read the entire text of my message (then again maybe he did and I am doing him an injustice - the problem might be he just could not understand it).

So I fired back:

Socrates,

Did you ACTUALLY read my question? Did you UNDERSTAND the information I spent MY VALUABLE time typing in there? I have access to the control panel. The email address exists and a password check proves it matches. So how about actually ANSWERING what I asked in a way that makes sense? Or do you just want to prove me right when I say you guys are useless?

David

For the reply you have to wait because this is happening in real time and I am waiting too!