Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Yahoo Mail sucks!

I remember a few years ago when Yahoo was the best example of innovation and technology on the Internet today.
Today, I think it is precisely the opposite.

It's been more than 10 years that I have a mail account at Yahoo, and 8 that became a Yahoo Mail Plus! user paying $ 20 per year.

During these years, my Yahoo account became my portal for mails, receiving all emails from my many accounts, as Yahoo has the ability to download emails from other providers.

Everything went wonderful, until in June 2008, when Yahoo decided to "improve" their email system.
Suddenly my mails began to double, triple, quadruple, etc.

I began to investigate the causes and turns out that Yahoo was working incorrectly downloading multiple times the same items from my email providers (believe me we're talking about a LOT of emails)

As a concerned customer, I decided to contact the technical service of Yahoo Mail.
After 2 months of various (and very crazy) testing, after the opening about 20 sub cases, they concluded that there was a bug in the system (nope, this guys are no really quick), and decided to escalate my case to the engineering department.

To this I must add the really annoying habit that this techs have of not reading emails. They will reply to you based on the first couple of lines, and will then ask you for data that was clearly detailed in line 10, or a few lines beyond.

Imagine my joy when the Engineering Department to inform them that this was (is) a known bug, already working on, and that would be solved soon.
They even gave me an "engineering case number" (2235901) to add to the nearly 30 numbers of cases (no, I'm not exaggerating, they open a new case with each contact) that I already had.

But why would I care, the issue "would be solved soon"

One month later, I contacted the technical support (another case number) to see that was happening with this solution and when was going to be ready.
They replied that the Engineering Dept. had encountered some problems and did not know when it would have it fix.

Two months later, the same story: "We appreciate your being a Premium User and we are committed to providing you with excellent service" ... "Our Engineering Team has determined that there is not an immediate fix for this issue, and they are continuing to work on the resolution" ... "I do appreciate your patience."

The following month, ditto.


Other months, ditto.

I forgot for a while, until I got an email from the billing department of Yahoo Mail: "Thanks for using Yahoo! Mail Plus." ... "it's time for the annual auto-renewal of your service" ... "your credit card will be charged the annual fee of $19.99"

It was like putting salt in the wound.

Once again, I Contacted the technical support department of yahoo mail.
Once again I got the same template answer (thank you for all your money, our developers have no idea of what is going (or maybe the have not even look into it), try another days, maybe you'll get lucky).

I forwarded the email from the support team to the billing department and requested to be credited for the many months I had been unable to use the service. Knowing how the gross incompetent they can be, I specifically mentioned that I did NOT wanted my premium account canceled, I just wanted to be refunded for the months with this problem.
I then attached a history of correspondence with the technical dept.

The billing dept Yahoo responded by asking me to complete a form at billing.yahoo in order to open the case.
Obediently, I followed the link and found out that the form was to claim for "malfunction of the website when trying to make a payment."

Have I Already mentioned that the Yahoo people do not read the messages that are sent to them?
Have I already mentioned that they reply to emails like decerebrated machines?

Anyway, I Complete the form as much as I could all the way to the end and in the Note field I pasted the email that I had previously sent to Yahoo's billing dept.

A few days later, I received a mail from Yahoo billing dept asking me to explain what the problem was. I detailed the problem once again and attached, again, the history of the exchange with the technical dept.

Two days later, another email from the billing dept Yahoo: "Could you give us your username and the case numbers opened with technical support?". (Information they had 3 times in the emails I have sent to them and that I have entered in the form when I opened the case at billing.yahoo)

VERIFIED: The technicians at Yahoo! do not know how to read!!!!

I forwarded them this information once more and explained what I wanted:
a) I did not wan to be charged a renewal fee,
b) I did not wanted to be charged until the issue was solved, and
c) once the issue is solved I wanted to be able to use the system without charge for the period that I was not able to use the system.

A day later, I received an automated mail from Yahoo: "Your account has been canceled," followed by an email from someone in the billing dept of Yahoo: "I've canceled your account and we are refunding to your card in the amount of $18 for the months could not use the system "

NO, I'm not kidding, is the true !

I answered something like "YOU DID WHAT ?????????????? I Asked you NOT to cancel my account! Immediately undo the change, so I do not loose any emails!"

The reply Response (from another clown in the billing dept Yahoo) was: "Sorry, there was a mistake." ... "once a subscription is cancelled, we are not able to re-instate on our end. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." ... "you will need to re-subscribe to the service"


No comment ... except to say: I hope they go bankrupt, or that someone buys them and fires all these useless technicians !!!!!