I’ve had a small website running on 1&1 (a hosting company) for years and finally decided it wasn’t worth my time anymore. Canceling it wasn’t as easy, first I had to Google “cancel 1&1” to even find documentation on how to do it. Of course, they put their cancellation pages on it’s own subdomain (cancel.1and1.com). I’m not sure if that’s so people can find it easily (unlikely) or that so search engines wont index it (likely).

I submitted my request and then had to wait for an email with a cancellation link, I clicked that and the page I landed at indicated I was done (surprisingly painless). Fast forward 5 days, I get this:

Second-to-Last Step … Finish Cancellation Request

Important: You will shortly receive 2 e-mail messages sent to the address specified in your User Settings in your 1&1 Control Panel. One message acknowledges that you have started the cancellation process and the second contains a specific website link to activate the cancellation. In order to activate your request and complete the process, you must follow the link e-mailed to you. Your cancellation will not be completed until you have confirmed the cancellation request by following the special link emailed to you. If you do not activate your request within the next 7 days, your cancellation will be discarded and your contract will remain active.

So since they know 90% of their customers are lazy (me) they know that they can wait a week before ACTUALLY canceling, then send you an email saying you haven’t actually cancelled yet, oh here click this link that we’re going to send you soon, oh and there’s a time limit on this deal. By the way, it’s been another week and I haven’t gotten that “second email,” probably a neat trick to get you to past that arbitrary deadline they set so you have to start the whole process over.

Pretty great customer support! If you liked this story and hate stunts like this, reblog so people can get the real story when they Google “cancel 1&1”.