Let me start by saying thanks in advance for any help and yes, I must do this via ftp.

OK, I can log into the ftp server manually, but login fails when called using the .netrc file which leads me to believe that it may have a problem parsing special characters. I do not have control over the server being logged into and have been told that the password must can not be changed (must contain a special character). My file looks something like this:

machine xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
login Domain1\user1
password A-Password1
macdef init
ascii
cd /some/directory
get somefile.txt
quit

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Since you said "something like this" people are going to have to use their imagination and/or guess, so here's a guess.

One line has a backslash. Try changing it to a pair
of backslashes and see if that helps.

Good luck.

are the access rights of .netrc correct? (It should be -rw-------)

Using two backslashes did the trick.
Changing the login line from
login Domain1\user1
to
login Domain1\\user1
gave me the desired results.

Thanks again for helping.