1and1 might not be popular here, but they're pretty cheap ($8.99 for .com), they have sales regularly and they throw in private whois info for free, plus your domain is locked down by default so the sort of thing described in the OP shouldn't happen.
I've used them and didn't have a problem until I wanted to transfer to another domain registar. After painfully trying to find the transfer auth code and transferring the domain name, 1and1 continued to bill me for a couple of months. To their credit, they reversed the charges after I called them - but that didn't leave me with a satisfactory experience.
I can understand why a company might want to make it painful to leave their service, but continuing to bill me points to either incompetence (some bugs in their billing system) or a malicious act (doubt it though).
One problem with 1and1 is that when your domains are about to be autorenewed, you don't get an email notification till the day of. I prefer registrars that give a few weeks heads up on that so I can cancel the autorenew if I want to let the domain expire (even GoDaddy gives advance notice).
Likewise, I've had a good experience with 1and1 for something approaching a decade. My GF and I have a couple dozen domains. Whenever she has a new creative idea, she gets a new domain.
1and1 is a terrible. Please do not listen to individual accounts of 'no problems'. If you do have a problem, you will be in trouble. 1and1 is a giant company that makes money by quantity, not quality. In other words, the majority will have no problem, so let's have millions of customers and screw those that have problems. Again, there's too many other good companies to use such a crappy company.
Never had a problem with them in almost 5 years.