Pros
There really are a lot of great perks, the vacation time isn't bad at all, decent insurance, free soda, coffee, fruit. There is also potential to make a lot in bonus, we were paid biweekly but sometimes my bonus check would almost equal another paycheck. They will hire you with almost no experience so it is a good way to get your foot in the door to an office job (a lot of the people who worked there had come from retail, 5 or 6 from Wawa specifically). You can also wear whatever you want, in fact they're so lax with appearance that some of the people smell but I guess that should go under cons. Also it was really a great group of people, I'd love to run into about 95% of the people who I worked with and catch up. Very eclectic mix which made for interesting people, black, white, hispanic, gay, lesbian, young, old, techy people, sporty people, city people... just a very diverse bunch of great individuals.
Cons
Honestly the company is a total joke and it's a miracle it's still in business. NO ONE IS RUNNING THIS PLACE. Don't bother introducing yourself to the leaders cause they change monthly. I only worked there for about 18 months and I believe the head of our office changed 4 times. If you read reviews from customers they'll tell you it's like pulling teeth to get a simple task accomplished. That is because Germany controls everything so it takes a week just to do something that should take ten minutes. Simple requests that are needed to restore a customers service could require 4 or 5 escalations and it needs to go through Germany which is 7 hours ahead. They also utilize some pretty shady business tactics of questionable legality. They autobill your credit card, if your card expires they send you to a debt collector without too much notice and it's very easy for those notices to slip through the cracks. They also place sales calls and sign people up for trials that will bill the card we already have if they don't cancel within the trial period. A lot of the times the customers don't authorize this. These sales are made through a third party. When they realize they're being billed 20.00 a month that they never agreed to, they get hit with a termination fee. Their BBB rating also went from an F to a B- and is now an A, all this in about two years so I don't know how that happened. The assistant manager types which are called second level agents are the ones who really work hard and show the most competence and interest in helping you in your role, they are paid maybe another 2.00 per hour than the people on the phones. There was also a good amount of drug use (mostly pot) at the holiday parties and in the office as well. (If you're wondering they do not drug test or do a background check). If they did 70-75% of the office would have to be fired. Part of the reason I had left was that the company is unaware of it's own policies, I was sitting there interpreting company policy with a person in management cause she was also not clear on whether I had followed protocol. Rules are made up as they go along, I was also reprimanded for a glitch in our software which caused a customers credit card information to be compromised. Essentially because I could have stopped this from happening if I had realized there was a fault in our new phone software. This place is a total mess, it's cool cause you can kind of do whatever you want and it will take them a while to realize it, I enjoyed kicking my shoes off and keeping my feet on the desk while I watched tv at work, but is this really what you want in a career? All this being said, I would recommend taking a JOB and this company and making sure you never intend for it to turn into a CAREER, hence my review title. It is a great way to get your foot in the door to an office job. If you are right out of college or do not plan on going to college its not bad, the pay isn't bad for a first job. I assure you, after a few months of working here you will get the frustration and and as ridiculous as some of the things I have mentioned are, they will not seem too far fetched. If you do take a job at 1&1, please look at it as a stepping stone and nothing more. Anyone who works there currently would probably tell you they could see the company imploding at any time.