Last night I received a response back from 1&1 tech support saying that they were going to finally cancel my domain.

Dear Chris DeMarco, (Customer ID: [hidden] )

Thank you for contacting us.

I have set the domain name safenetsurfer.com to cancel. You should see
the refund on the next invoice/statement.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

I found it funny that they wouldn’t just do this in the first place, but at any rate, I got an invoice this morning showing the refund for the domain. Finally, this issue is resolved. Overall, I definitely could have been more impressed, and probably will move away from 1&1 as my domains need to be renewed. At any rate, they did resolve the situation and as far as I can tell, things are good for now.