Life and Times of an Infrastructure Architect - May 5th, 2008

Mr. Gauger (CEO of 1and1),

While it's certainly your prerogative to reject an email from a paying customer, I might advise you to reconsider the impact of this decision. As I'm sure you read my LinkedIn Mail before you declined it as "not appropriate", you are aware that I'm a paying customer of yours. You're also aware that I've been struggling for six months to retrieve a domain name held hostage from me by your company.

Perhaps the appropriate response was to let me know that you would forward this to one of your underlings, perhaps Sebastian Moser who manages your US operations. Sebastian was good enough to be listed in the phonebook, and answered his home telephone when I called him this afternoon. He did not call me inappropriate, he gave me his email address, and told me he would take care of the issue.

As you find it inappropriate for your customers to contact you, I'd advise you to read The Cluetrain Manifesto. It's content describes the dialogs that businesses need to have with their customers in the internet era. 1and1 has deemed it necessary to extort an extra $38 from me on top of the $11 domain I long-since paid for, yet still will not transfer control of this domain to me. I can only assume you and your company have fallen on the hardest of times. In light of this situation, I have purchased a copy of this book on Amazon, and shipped it to your offices in M. You shall receive it next week.

it still will not transfer control of to me, I can only assume that 1and1, and perhaps you Mr. Gauger, have fallen on very harsh financial times. Because of this, I just ordered you a copy, it will arrive at your Mannheim office next week.


Then again, what do I know. I'm just a businessman myself, one who would never imagine treating his customers the way you have personally treated me.

Michael T. Halligan
Chief Technology Officer
BitPusher, LLC
206-508-2924