Comments on: Making the most of Customer Care forms!

By: lynette

lynette — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:49:15 +0000

yahoo’s customer care is like reading greek i speak greek. like everyone says you cant get a simple question answered. all i want to do is change my frigging long email to a shorter one and they tell me i cannot do it. i keep asking them for a phone # to have someone explain to me there must be a way to do it but they never give that number. i just joined email and its not as good as yahoo. i guess i have to just stop using my yahoo email for a few months and it will be deleted and then i can create a new email address under a different name. i used to have earthlink and loved it..the best customer care than anyone. they walk you through everything on the frigging phone.

By: kathy

kathy — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:14:02 +0000

I agree yahoo sux now u guys never answer questions ur always rerouted to a page with answers to questions that are hardly asked what if we have a question thats not on there? then we’er left thinking and getting it ourself whats yahoo customer support for then? nothing at allll. so i agree ak………

By: fatboy46

fatboy46 — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:20:22 +0000

Well, as a 10+ year Yahoo mail user, ‘help’ is an oxymoron. ALL of my issues have had to do with something that YAHOO did to the mail service.. one day it works properly… next day it is a mess. Generic responses that do not address the issue or mischaracterize it. eventually the problem goes away.. hmmmm… must have been a problem in the new programming!! I didnt change anything.. suggests that Yahoo doesnt test their work.
Ryan… dude! they cannot be paying you enough to keep track of all this stuff and deal with us irritated users. Granted, “free email” makes it hard to complain a lot.. and is the reason I give up so quickly. I changed to sbcglobal.net and did not ‘merge’ my old yahoo into the new YAHOO acount, didnt need all the SPAM that collects there after 10 years of internet exposure- so yeah, I do pay for YAHOO mail.. just dont use that account. 15 years at IBM and 7 at FedEx help desk makes me frustrated at the level of service that we get from Yahoo. I keep telling my students to get YAHOO mail accounts.. just to spread the frustration…(kidding).. its easy to use and I can help them with their mail issues.
Ryan, thanks for all that you do and especially all that you try to do.. I can only imagine the responses you get in any meeting with these folks when you bring up all the flak you see in here. IMHO programmers are the only people in the world that change change a program, then blame the users and the hardware for it not working properly..

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:28:41 +0000

I know this is more for generalized discussion, but I thought a current example of how Yahoo addresses (or more accurately fails to address) problems it has created might be representative of what we are all going through to one extent or another. Having been on numerous forums I see chronic Yahoo issues are shared by many others…and in recent months have been soaring. I have been a long time Yahoo email user and was quite satisfied. However, I a sad to say that is no longer the case. Currently, for weeks now (yes, I said WEEKS!) I have been unable to perform seaches in my email that will show any emails dated prior to June 30, 2008. After repeated contacts with Yahoo and HOURS wasted talking with them, still ZERO results. They continually give the same, lame line…”we are working on it, it will be resolved ASAP”. Customer service agents refuse to give even an estimated time table for its resolution. So, I find myself like many others now using my Gmail account much more regularly and have discovered all I have been missing! Gmail is sooo much more user friendly, more features…and fast! So unless Yahoo gets their act together, I am going to join many others who are moving all their email over to their Gmail accounts and discontinue my Yahoo altogether. With the combination of Yahoo’s dismissive attitude toward their problems and their customers, along with Gmail’s much better platform I am sure we will see the migration from Yahoo to Gmail by the millions, which according to the forums is already happening.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:08:42 +0000

I’ve used the forms, and I still have a Rocketmail account that has not been able to receive new mail in over 4 months. I’ve had this account since 1998, and several months ago all new mail to it stopped, including spam.

I opened a case, via the form, and it was eventually sent to engineering, then I was told it was a known issue with no known time for a fix.

“I apologize for not being able to solve your problem but do appreciate
your letting us know this issue is important to you. I’ve added you to
the list of affected customers to help our engineers prioritize their
development.”

What does it take to get multiple broken email accounts higher up in engineering priority?

In case anyone cares, the account is nathan at rocketmail dot com, case KMM129362410V16962L0KM.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:15:50 +0000

Well, filling out forms is one thing. Acting on this issues or feature requests is another. My issue is that I’d like IMAP supported with my Yahoo Mail Plus account. All of Yahoo’s competitors seem to support it (AOL, Google, Fastmail, etc.) but in true fashion, my $20 per year versus free for the others doesn’t go very far. Especially when it excludes IMAP support for its customers. After filling out forms, chatting with support, and filling out blogs (well this is my first time), inaction breeds inaction and Yahoo is again toward the rear of the pack.

After having a great email address, I hate to throw it away but after waiting for something for the past two years in regards to IMAP (and having a bent of excitement when it came to light that the iPhone would have IMAP supported), I continue to be let down…..

So I’ve drawn a line in the sand. 30 days. If I can’t get IMAP supported on my paid Yahoo account within 30 days, I’m cancelling my service.

I can’t sit here and continue to support a dying company that isn’t willing to innovate and go the distance for its customers. I was always a fan of Yahoo but after sticking with ‘em this long, Google hasn’t only promised, they have delivered………

30 days…………………………and counting.

By: cheryl

cheryl — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:00:54 +0000

Bainbridgebob……..good points. In the old Classic Yahoo under general settings, wasn’t there an option to include “none of, part of, or entire” email you were replying to? I can’t find that option anymore. So as you said, you have no option but to hit reply and then either reply with the entire previous message, highlight the previous message, or back out/delete the previous message. Again, to me, a simple change that just costs Yahoo customers more keystrokes and more time.

By: Bainbridgebob

Bainbridgebob — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:07:29 +0000

Count me as another 10 year Yahoo mail user unhappy with Yahoo mail and recognizing that strong options are available to me in Firefox and Safari. Where to begin?

The situation is perhaps most readily understood by the “show bcc” command. Oxymoronic language is unhelpful. The inability to just “reply” without attaching the entire message string and/or the received message is no fun either. Customer Care suggests “just” deleting the former message lines in the “reply” will do the trick. Can’t we just “reply to sender” rather than reply AND attach all that prior message string? Customer Care here suggests we reply in a different color to show where the new material is. I am now running parallel mail systems in other browsers, including Yahoo in those browsers, but patience wanes.

By: robertaR

robertaR — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:57:19 +0000

Let me add another complaint about customer care NOT READING the submissions they receive. They expect us to read the “help” section (which is usually of no “help”) but they don’t bother reading to see what our actual problem is. If it’s anything close to something in the help section, they copy & paste.

Heaven forbid we actually admit we DON’T KNOW. That might involve giving the problem to someone who might actually be able to do something about it.

I’ve been using the forms & emailing customer care back & forth for about 3 weeks now with it leading no where. I have taken screen shots of the problem, customer care has been in my account several times, and yet, they will never admit there is a problem.

I FINALLY got an email that said “we are fowarding this to quality assurance”, then NOTHING for 5 days. So I emailed back to ask what was going on & went right back to square one with a copy & paste of how to fix the problem from the “help” section, a “fix” that doesn’t actually work!

Do they realize how STUPID they make themselves look when they do this? Obviously not. Especially when their “solution” doesn’t solve the problem.

Just for kicks, my concern is over the “Welcome” message on the front page of the “All New Yahoo Mail” (which by the way isn’t any better than the old, err, sorry, “classic” mail, especially since half of the option settings STILL don’t work & I’ve been using this version for 2 years now. The “Pardon our mess” signs are getting rather old)

If you’ll read the “help” section, you’ll see that yahoo (and customer care copy & paste) says that to change the name this welcome message displays, you’ll need to change your name in the My Account section. It should, according to the “help” section, display the entire First Name field in My Account.

What this welcome message ACTUALLY displays is the first name in the outgoing email name field, which is in a completely different section than the first & last name in My Account.

I’ve put generic words in to test this. Test it youself. The welcome message on every other yahoo page is the First Name field from My Account…classic yahoo email, my yahoo, and yahoo.com. But on the “All New Yahoo Mail” it displays the wrong field.

Now, if someone like me, middle class woman from small town USA, can figure out that this isn’t working correctly, then by golly, sign me up to work at Yahoo Customer Care, because I surely can Ctrl C-Ctrl V with the best of them.

By: Chip

Chip — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:36:41 +0000

I understand that customer care is “working” on the Inbox search issues in “classic”. I was asked to read this blog for information by customer care. Couldn’t find anything here about it. I have a couple thousand small e-mails which I search daily. Now, without warning, the search engine is not working and no fix has been offered. My inbox is absolutely useless now! And Yahoo doesn’t have any means for me to export the mails! Years of dedicated Yahoo use, and you’ve scuttled me. I cannot communicate with anyone that isn’t in my address book. It is impossible to thumb through all the mails. Forget finding old messages; this hosting is now an incredible waste of time. I’m afraid that it is time to find another host.