Making the most of Customer Care forms!

July 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm

Gee, you must have read my mind (or read my entry on the Y-Mail group). I filled in one of those forms, and got back an email about a totally unrelated issue. It was like somebody got paid per reply and didn’t care if it was even remotely relevant.

So then I replied to the address on the form, and the reply to *that* gave me a link that took me back to where I originally put in the issue information. A definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect different results, so I’m done complaining.

But at least a couple other people on the Y-Mail group had the same issue, so we commiserated.

I’ll just wait to get it fixed one of these days when one of the testers — Yahoo does have testers? — or bigwigs sees it. In the meantime I hope that I don’t need to use any of those alternate email addresses that I’m supposed to maintain, since the form wiped mine out.

July 1st, 2008 at 3:03 pm

I have filled out the proper forms…….I didn’t just email Customer Care. I’m doing everything a customer should do to report problems. I read all the help sections – which never seem to address the questions people really have or they just address the most simple of features. I always get a confirmation that they’ve received my email. Then I either don’t hear from them, or, as in this case, I got an email reply saying they were sorry I was having problems and please read the help section – which I plainly told them I had read and reread………one reply just said Sorry for the inconvenience. And today, after having NOT received anything close to “help” I start getting surveys wanting to know how customer care is doing.

So, Ryan, what is the recourse when you follow the proper procedure and you don’t make any headway? I guess like Leon says, you just wait until the problem hits one of the bigwigs or one of the employees of the Yahoo IT team……..

July 1st, 2008 at 5:16 pm

It would be helpful if after checking everything as outline by Cheryl, one could actually find a form on the patronising mishmash that masquarades as help pages.

July 1st, 2008 at 6:50 pm

I too have quit complaining about the lack of response to problems, i say screw it, just time to move on to a more worthy portal. BYE BYE YAHOO, you used to be cool.

July 1st, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Philip, if you click on “Help” on any Yahoo page you’re on and either type something in the search box or go to FAQ……..when you’re done reading the unhelpful information, usually at the bottom of the page it will say “Was this helpful……Yes or No”……if you click “no” then sometimes you will see the option to Email Customer Service. I agree with you that it’s not “out there” and easy to find. I’ve done it for years and sometimes I can’t even find it myself.

But even if you find the form, Customer Service is lacking either in the knowledge to read and comprehend a problem or in the desire to try to understand the problem. It becomes very time consuming and then maddening to use your time to report a problem or ask a question and then not receive “service”.

I also don’t think it’s worth my time to fill out the surveys asking how customer service did…….
it generates no feedback at all.

July 2nd, 2008 at 12:12 am

Ryan, I use the Customer Care forms for postmasters, and have a quick remark: previously we had the possibility to ask about the status of an application, which was very usefull due to the delays of you Customer Care department for giving a response. Do you know if it will / can be sometimes added, or was totally droped out ?

July 2nd, 2008 at 3:38 am

Ryan,
I was away from home and unable to log in for 10 days, so needless to say I had a lot of back-up when I returned on the 23rd of June. This is not the time for the kind of problems I’ve experienced all week long. Having been the liaison chosen to work with a programmer years ago I feel that I can say without reservation that someone needs to be fired. After having worked with the best, what I have experienced this past week is inexcusable. I cannot believe that these new changes were not tested thoroughly before being implemented for trial on your regular clients. The lost time for content that disappeared after trying unsuccessfully to attach another document and 2 pictures is the last straw.
Yahoo is not the only company out there that replies with flowery apologies that do not address the issue written about (as noted by other writers above). But adept as we are at stringing words together, I’m sure we can find a physical address for Yahoo, and split with 42 cents to let upper management know how their company is being ruined by amateurs who do not know what they are doing. I am at the point of finding another mail provider if substantial improvement is not seen very soon.

July 2nd, 2008 at 4:38 am

I agree with Bonnie’s detailed and well-written comment. I’ve been a Yahoo user for over 10 years, and Y Mail has less functionality than it did back then. The last straw was taking away “Forward as Attachment” for Mac users. I also agree that the responses one receives from Customer Care are, more often than not, lacking in any helpful suggestions. Sometimes, however, when I would reply to the response (often REPEATING my original question and explaining why their response was unhelpful or irrelevant), I MIGHT get a response from a different representative that was more useful. So…are you now saying that replying to a Customer Care response will now bounce back to the original submission form? Great. Another thing you’ve taken away from us.

July 2nd, 2008 at 4:49 am

Unlike many complains I see below, I had my issues resolved or queries answered everytime I wrote to Yahoo. As promised I always get a reply within 24 hours. Even though yahoo mail/messenger has had issues, I still think/say Yahoo is doing good job. Be patient guys.

July 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 am

I’ve used YahooMail for years, and have found your forms to be worse than useless – BECAUSE WHOEVER RECEIVES THEM DOES NOT READ THEM.

I put all the information in them – browser used, what I was doing when the problem happened, what I’ve tried so far, and that I’ve read and tried the stuff from the Help Desk… and what do I get back? A generic form ‘letter’ that may or may not even be on the same topic, telling me to go through the steps in the Help Desk that I’VE ALREADY TRIED AND TOLD YOU THAT I TRIED.

It is EXTREMELY frustrating to type all that info in – per the form’s instructions, no less – and not get any help. Hire a couple of people, for God’s sake, who actually care about Yahoo’s customers.

Oh yeah, and your surprise ‘upgrade’ of Mail? SUCKS. You really ought to hire a couple of average users to test your new ‘features’ before rolling them out. Again, hire someone who actually cares about Yahoo’s customers!

July 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 am

I don’t know if I should feel good that I am not alone on this subject or not, but I too have been having a lot of problems with lack of service from Yahoo Customer Care recently. As has been written already, the people in Customer Care really do need to care about the customers, and it doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment. Are these people afraid they will loose their jobs after MS buys out Yahoo or is it just the opposite?

July 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 am

I’ve been unable to access my Yahoo mail account since last week and have had no response from submitting the ‘help’ form, despite it promising a response within 24 hours. Looking around the web it sounds like other people are having difficulties, although I’m not clear whether its a few or lots.

I’ve used Yahoo mail for years – it’s been a brilliant service which I’ve come to rely on. Now I can’t access my account (for no apparent reason) I’m completely screwed. If I can’t get this sorted soon I’m going to have to set up a new email account and it won’t be with Yahoo.

July 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 am

I can go one better – I have multiple yahoo accounts, never get answers to questions so stopped asking (if I can’t figure it out, I’m guessing the ‘support’ staff can’t either). But I did participate in the charity email id auctions (on ebay – much hyped on these pages). Oooh, and since almost knew about them, I won. So then I get a mail saying I have to call (yes, a phone call – to a real 10-digit number) during business hours to get my new id (with associated pin number? What the heck?) turned on. Guess what? Even their phone service is bad – you get routed to an answering machine that says leave a number and we’ll get back to you. yeah, right, just like all those other ‘getting back’ to me via your forms. If I have to leave a blooming message, why the heck can’t it be done on=line in one of your interminable forms?

(by the way – notice that even ‘ryan’ doesn’t even respond to any of the comments about his article. Guess they don’t even read their own stuff)

July 2nd, 2008 at 12:03 pm

Okay, want to amend the last post – I did get through on the phone to someone. And do you know what – bright, helpful, knew the right info – good experience. They should use her as the role modle for ALL their customer service personnel. (still think it is a tad obsolete to have to go via a phone when you normally do email sign ups on line but that wasn’t her call, I’m guessing)

July 2nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Carol,
-
I’m reading, but I don’t have a lot I can tell people on this. I can’t address individual user issues here (though I understand why a post like this might invite some issue posting). I’m keeping an eye on all of this and sharing it with some folks internally.
-
Also, with regard to the auctions we have to operate outside of a normal process because this isn’t something that we have ever done before (and people paid money for the IDs). Sorry that it didn’t go smoothly.
-
Ryan

July 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm

*LAUGHS* Come on, Ryan, is a Manager looking over your shoulder on this one?

IMHO, Customer Service is one of the BIGGEST reasons why Google gets better press than Yahoo, and seems to have happier customers.

Like so many others, I too have been a Mail user for 10+ years, and I have had the same run-around during that time with forms that don’t provide options for my issue, responses that clearly indicate the CSR did not even read what I wrote, and referrals to help pages that don’t address my problem.

*SIGH* I wish your support folks could be forced to go to DisneyWorld training or something…

July 2nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm

Over the years, I’ve had the same experiences of expending far too much effort to find an answer that doesn’t exist in the Help pages, and then even more effort to find a way to submit a question, and then 95% of the time receiving a reply from some person or machine that either ignored or didn’t understand my inquiry.

With all of your customers, you must be spending a fortune on Help services, so it’s a shame that you–and we–are getting so little value from them. You, like most organizations, give short shrift to Help pages, although they’re probably the most cost-effective way to answer most “how-to” questions. Maybe you should provide a wiki for the Help pages.

Evem for the “broken functionality” issues, maybe a wiki would allow Help staff and customers all to work from the same descriptions of the issues.

The underlying issue, though, is that bad support is a double-whammy: you waste money, and we get the impression that you (Yahoo, not Ryan) are incompetent.

July 2nd, 2008 at 6:13 pm

Oh Ryan, if only you knew. Every time I have tried contacting Yahoo’s alleged “Customer Care” (yes, by filling in the required forms), the first reply (other than the auto-response) would always be some canned answer that was either totally irrelevant or only vaguely relevant to the problem I reported. And in every case, it was obvious that nobody bothered to read what I had typed.

On two recent occasions, I tried to submit suggestions for improving “All-New Mail” using the correct form, and both times I got canned answers that treated my suggestions as problem reports! So much for me trying to help improve your product. Why would anyone bother?

July 2nd, 2008 at 9:51 pm

I am willing to give props when props are due. I ammended my blog at the lunancy of the at the phone (which wasn’t a decision by Lori) by stating that when I got someone (Lori) she was wonderful – pray to get her or her identical clone any issue. She had answers to questions that I hadn’t even known I was going to ask. That is good customer service – she even went above the call to help me. So Props all around the Charity Yahoo ID team. Lori – make them bow to you for this because it is you, all you girl. And Ryan, sing her praises wide and far, because you find a good one – hang on for dear life.

Ryan take these people and USE them, use their talents, their people skills, and dare I say it, their ability to CARE!!11!1!11!

Now to the other casee – I have through the wringer with fillout the form with exact in and exact nuture of the problem, and step taken, submitted, only get back an obviously script response that read only 2 lines of the complaint, none of the environ and none of the steps taken. Becuase they told me to the same blooming thing….again….and again…..

I do understand forms – helps funnel the question to the right teams, providing them with the information they need. Good Concept. Can seriously sped up production of customer care.

Areas of forcefully intrusion by reality – many times customer care support are not as ‘expert’ as your long time users (maybe you keep a class of ‘ascended support’ for those customers who have mails accounts (or more) since shep was a pup.

Another area of forced reality intrusion – unfortnately, in any job, some percentage don’t like their job and so do it to meet quotas. Answer the emails even incorrectly and you meet your quota. There is no linkage (especially now) to the number of times a question had to be asked by the same person before resolution.

Another forced injection of the hot air of reality is that 24 hours can be a long time if you are down. Never (and some response fall into that category) can be, well, forever. And then finally you get a response after much gnashing of teeth and gnashing of hands, and it says “do step 3″ which you had pointed out quite literally in the third line that you had indeed done step 3 and it did nothing (or emitting a puff of purple smoke sending the lower level demon back down to the 4 or 6 circle of hell).

And to be honest, there does not seem any transparency into how the process is being improved – you gotta tell us how bad it really is or we will keeping thinking that we are all being mocked. And once we know where we are, then maybe we can get a way our.

I have Two yahoo mail IDs, three associated web its (GeoCitis Pro, Personal Address). I have groups moved to Yahoo!groups when Meetup when grabby, I have rocketmail, I have ymail, and yes I bought some new ‘celebrity’ ones to give as gifts. We get no feedback on improvement suggestions or survey results. As anyone who is a heavy user every been asked to REALLY be pre-beta testing (and besides, many things complained about in Beta never seem to anywhere anyways. And I have to say, most complaints on here have come with a ‘wish list’ or at least something that be considered constructive.

So please – these are people who have been using your product; they don’t want to jump ship to the next big thing. But the next big thing is easier to use (I got gmail, I got hotmail, I got aol) We are just asking that when you put out a big notice that things are getting better with forms, you at least 1) acknowledge that it may get MUCH worse first (like most change) and 2) you have a way to identify and manage those bugaboos.

July 3rd, 2008 at 3:44 am

To Brian and JC, concerning the js.worthathousandwords.com blank, forever hanging page.

I don’t the details on this specific page, but if you do a search for it, you will find a lot of other people are having trouble with it too. Also, I have seen some of the higher end advertisements on Yahoo do stuff like you describe. I think some of these marketing companies are trying to push the envelop just a little too much and end up breaking something.

just my 2 cents.
– Shat

July 3rd, 2008 at 3:52 am

Ryan,

As has been mentioned, it is extremely annoying to receive a reply to a trouble report or suggestion that clearly shows that the employee did not read or understand the message. If the employee does not understand the message, they should say so, or even better they should ask their supervisor for help.

– Shat

July 3rd, 2008 at 10:07 am

Shat, JC, Brian,
-
That error you are talking about was a Firefox bug, and I’m pretty sure it has been resolved.
-
Let me know if the problem is persisting and I’ll rattle some cages.
-
Ryan

July 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am

Hi everyone,
-
I completely sympathize with the frustration over some of the responses from Customer Care, but also want to chime in with some thoughts on customer care in general. Please understand that this does not reflect the efforts of my friends in our customer care, or the people working to make it better. It’s more about my experience with any customer care from any company.
-
When any of us have problems and reach out for help, we know what we mean with whatever we say or write. We have seen or felt something wrong and know what it means to us. However communicating that isn’t always easy, especially when so much of communication hinges on non-verbal stuff. Same thing happens to me, and I’m someone who poses from time to time as a “writer”.
-
In just the last few days I’ve corresponded with some users who shared their horror stories and in some cases I couldn’t make sense of the issue in the original email either. And I’m not being measured on how efficiently I handle the situation. What makes sense pouring out of our fingers doesn’t always read the same on the other end.
-
Anyway, I’m totally comfortable acknowledging that agents get it wrong sometimes, but I’ve known a lot of people who handled email support for tech companies and can honestly say that I’ve never met a single person who just replied carelessly.
-
Regardless of my sympathies for the challenges providing and receiving customer care, I can assure you that our guys are working on making it better for Yahoo! users. So when you get that survey asking you or feedback on your experience, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fill them out. They are very closely reviewed.
-
Ryan
-

July 3rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm

After more than a half dozen emails to customer care to resolve what should have been a fairly straight forward problem, I get one that says go to help file or blog. I signed up for mail plus some time back so that I could get customer support, the first attempt of trying to resolve a problem with my business mail required many emails to reach a point of gathering several files from my system to have them respond with use help file or blog same point I am at again. I gave up on my first problem but this time I decided the problem needed to be resolved. Yes, I have also got several responses that clearly indicate they not only did not read my email and understand but that they also not use those incident numbers to check all correspondence that has done in an effort to solve problem. By the way the reason I signed up for mail plus was to help resolve spam problems and to get better customer support but given they did no follow up with information provided on first problem and every time I access my business mail I am reminded just how frustrating customer service can be or the lack of. When I need to use customer service for my web hosting account or merchant account it is amazing the speed and concise, correct answers I receive each and every time!

July 3rd, 2008 at 5:17 pm

Ryan,
This is a response to your post on the challenges of customer care, but before a say anything let me provide a little history of my experience in customer care. I am a security technician and now run my own company and started as a bench tech responding to field tech issues that involved working with our programmers then onto 800 tel. support for end users to working in the field in large distribution of beta software.

I have been with companies that hands down would resolve any problem no matter what it took from simple answers that worked to me being put on a plane to show up at their door. I have also worked for companies that sat around and made fun of the customers problems and where so conceded that they knew the problem without reading the entire problem and more often than not fixed nothing.

When I have a challenging problem 1) get a concise understanding of the persons capabilities with whom I am corresponding 2) Then I collect as much info as possible 3) Is this problem unique or one I have had before 4) finally just because I may not be able to duplicate problem does NOT mean there is not a problem and I NEVER give up until the issue is resolved NEVER!

Customer service would be the most challenging aspect of my job and not everyone is cut out for it no matter how qualified they be. My customers may not always understand all the technical aspects of their problem but they know when they are being disrespected and received answer meant only to make them go away.

Prior to this post I spoke of a problem with spam when I first signed up for mail plus. Several emails and a lot of effort on my behalf to provide the information requested only to have the information end up in front of a customer support person who choose to give me the answer meant to make me go away. This was not only disrespectful to me but all the other customer care folks that put a genuine effort forward to help me.

This post was not intended to be offensive and I realize just how challenging customer care can be. There is a balance of product knowledge, information gathering and customer understanding that if you get it right will leave you with far more customers who are pleased and you will never know or end up with a great many complaints and hear about it time and again.
Jeff

July 4th, 2008 at 1:39 am

Since the classic mail has been revamped recently, I have none of my emails that I saved for years. Where are my emails? How do I get them back?

July 4th, 2008 at 5:07 am

Ryan,

Like other comments, mine targets the lack of meaningful response. I suspect that you do not have the power to change things. But, perhaps you can pass this on to those who do have that power:

1. Collect under descriptive headings the kinds of complaints being reported. Then analyze them to see whether this is a Yahoo problem or something that individual complaint makers have brought upon themselves.

2. If it is the former, tell the complaint makers that it is Yahoo’s problem and that Yahoo will fix it.

3. Do NOT give boilerplate that simply repeats earlier boilerplate and indicates that Yahoo people have NOT carefully read the complaints sent in.

I thank you for your interest, sympathize with your job, and wish you well. Ted

July 4th, 2008 at 7:33 am

Dear Ryan and The My Yahoo! Management Team,

I, also, echo the recent comments made by Bonnie and the many other My Yahoo! users. I agree with most of the bloggers’ complaints and have personnaly experienced the frustration of dealing with the many changes recently made by My Yahoo!

In general, there are 2 major issues:

1 – Yahoo! has FORCED these changes upon its users, whether they wanted them or not. It’s fine to give users an alternative or to “tweak” some things here or there, but to make wholesale changes and then, eventually, to NOT GIVE A CHOICE at all (e.g. eliminating Classic My Yahoo!) is ridiculous!!

2 – Yahoo’s inability (or unwillingness) to properly respond to the situation and all the customer complaints.

PLEASE give us back Classic My Yahoo!

PLEASE respond to customers’ concerns with actual human-typed email solutions rather than sending generic, boilerplate email responses.

CLOSED CIRCUIT to YAHOO! Mangement: You are losing customers and potential revenue!

Thanks for reading.
Mark

July 4th, 2008 at 9:26 am

Dear Ryan; I’m at my wits end after 3 days of multiple attempts to get “auto complete” back! I thought it was my minimal computor experience until in desparation I read foregoing comments from users far more conversant than I. As a VERY experienced marketing & merchandising professional I’m totally mystified that Yahoo would make major changes to Classic Mail with no prior input or notice given that changes would go into effect as of a certain date & invite feedback before implementing. After all you guys at Yahoo know how to contact most if not all of your customers. This is not rocket science!…or is it? Incidently the Yahoo Customer Service Team were excellent with quick responses, however none of the suggestions “cured” my particular problem, since I could never scroll to “auto complete”, close & save. However one of your bloggers’ suggestions helped me most. It’s quite simple & fairly quick. Not ideal, but OK, since I can’t afford any more time on this.

July 4th, 2008 at 9:39 am

Greetings…

Ryan –

I completely understand your point about sometimes the information that is so plain to us being not quite so plain to the person reading the message.

Explain, though, how a problem can exist for oveer two years with *the same set of emails* being sent?

I have a Mail Plus! account which has been active for several years. The moment that I transferred to Mail Plus!, however, my Yahoo ID stopped being able to connect to Messenger.

Short story – two years and several complete cycles of emails, log files, and comments have met with absolutely *no* satisfaction!

I would be more than happy to discuss this issue with you in depth (and be more than happy to send you a set of all the emails [minus the autoresponders] for reference); I would truly appreciate your feedback on what could have been said different to have this issue resolved.

Over two years, Ryan – and every time I mention that I have already followed their instructions, they send me the same set of instructions.

Face it – I believe you will be hard pressed to find many people who have positive experiences with Yahoo! Customer Care.. and that is a very sad reality.

Until that time…

July 4th, 2008 at 10:32 am

Well, 30 comments so far and one is positive and a couple of others are less than completely negative. Subtract the ones by Ryan and you get almost 80% of feedback that can be summarized as “DIS-SATISFIED”.

I wonder if things would stay this way once Microsoft takes over…..

July 4th, 2008 at 4:44 pm

Ryan,
I had made 2 post yesterday to this forum that still able to be seen above and since then the following other comments also state what I am saying. I am at almost a dozen emails to resolve an issue with mail plus classic account and yesterday more information was requested which I replied with as well as another brief description of problem so as avoid the misunderstanding of what I needed. I just got a response that talks about the “frustration of downloading messenger Beta 9.0″; my problem has nothing to do with downloading 9.0. As I am sure others would agree, how about you stop telling us “They are very closely reviewed.” because if that where the case then others such as myself would not be so upset.

July 4th, 2008 at 7:21 pm

Count me as another unsatisfied Yahoo Mail Plus customer that has had the same rote responses that sometimes don’t even address the issue that i raised. In my case I don’t wuse my yahoo mail address but have Yahoo host my domain name. Doesn’t Yahoo realize that someday I’m going to shift my domain and my money to another host. No goodbye will be needed and my clients won’t see any change.

Comacast has similar poor customer service. Six weeks after FIOS arrived I was gone. Never looked back and much better service (15 months with one five minute problem). Does Yahoo want to be my next goodbye?

July 4th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

Nothing is a bigger waste of time than dealing with Yahoo support. Yahoo has THE MOST PATHETIC support of any organization I’ve ever dealt with. Because of this, I made the move to Google mail this week.

July 4th, 2008 at 11:43 pm

Having delt with Customer Care Reps from many companies, high-tech and low, to include AOL, Microsoft, and Google, I would have to say that Yahoo’s current customer service is about average, perhaps even better than some of the other companies of similar size.

I think one of the things that many of us forget is that Yahoo has millions of customers and there are potentially millions more to take our place, if we should leave. So, even if a few hundred of us are dissatisfied, we only amount to a small percentage of Yahoo’s overall customer base, and probably very little within their revenue stream.

July 5th, 2008 at 6:43 pm

need help….need yahoo mail to block user id johnracole….this is not a real person….and is using this id to commit fraud on match.com and probably other sites….many women have been scammed….luckily not me…there are others out there….have to make it harder to set up email…right now anyone can and use any name they want to….no verification of identity…that only enables these people to stalk and prey on vulnerable women and perhaps men…have to stop it!!!

July 7th, 2008 at 2:27 am

While this may not need to be said, in response to Barb’s cyber-stalking message, I would like to point out that anonymous e-mail addresses can also be used as protection against stalkers. With anonymous e-mail addresses people can get to know each other without revealing their true identity or physical location. This can in many cases be a good thing. If used wisely, a person can filter out potential abusers before the abuser has any real idea of who they are or where they live. However, as Barb pointed out, abusers are often more skilled at fooling their victims into trusting them and revealing too much information.

Bottom line, the problem is not the availability of anonymous e-mail addresses. The problem is people placing trust into other people whom they should not. And I think this has been a problem since the dawn of time and is not likely to go away any time soon.

– Shat

July 7th, 2008 at 4:22 am

Well, I came here not knowing this was the topic -my complaint being that I just TRIED to fill out a form that refused to take the info!!!! I have a prodigy address which goes through Yahoo mail and I was trsting something this morning from my laptop using the web mail server. I reproduced a problem and tried to write to ATT-Yahoo by the support form did NOT have an option for my problem. I tried to select OTHER and it refused to accept other!

Anyway here IS the problem
I am having a major problem right now with messages sent in plain text when using the web mail server that line spacings are removed between paragraphs and it ends up being one big blob of text. This needs to be fixed. Some lists and some groups strip html from messages and it makes well written and edited posts a jumble of words with no clarity or emphasis. In fact when sent to an L-soft list the plain text message had html codes ADDED – but without line spacings!!!

Stephanie Hunt-Crowley

July 7th, 2008 at 4:33 am

Ryan – I just read your post about feedback surveys – I admit to NOT always filling them out – why? Because I do not know WHICH question/response the survey refers to. I dont want to respond positively to a response that was useless or critically to one that was excellent. There needs to be a way – such as DATE the problem/response to which the survey applies – so that I can respond knowing that my comments are valid and apply to the right support response. After sending three frustrating e-mails on a topic which should get a NEGATIVE rating, then a valid response from another support technician, which should get a GOOD`rating – how do I respond?

July 7th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Having just contacted Yahoo! UK about the tag-lines in messages and getting a poor response back it doesn’t seem to matter how much detail goes into a message. I even included the blog post on here showing the agent what I meant but I was told they show other users about new Yahoo services. Personally I find them tacky when you have 12 of them at the bottom of the messages, it also puts you off using Yahoo mail for more formal communications when the recipient is told to check out Yahoo’s new gossip website.

I get a lot of spam from other Yahoo users and I have reported it many times but get the same response back each time. Filling an abuse form out against another Yahoo member is tedious as well having to get their username, the email headers, the message body it takes time when you have 20 other messages from Yahoo members.

Cant say the support is any better than Microsoft for example. Microsoft do however make it easier to report abuse by forwarding the email to them, they also seem to keep their word e.g.tag-lines being removed.

Ideally Yahoo would have removed the tag-lines from my email and made it so when I click the “Spam” button and the message is from another Yahoo member an abuse report is automatically sent along with the appropriate details.

July 7th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

who would i email about a mail I subscribe to; it ends up in spam constantly. i click ‘not spam;’ and it ends up in spam again.

July 8th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

WoW.

I was just coming here to ask if the email programming tekkies could enhance the ‘Flag’ function by giving us several different Flag Colors to use in our inbox..

TO : =bg= ;

I don’t know but have you actually Added that email address into your address book? Maybe then they would quit chit-canning it to your Bulk. Just a thought. (Since ya didnt mention trying it)

July 8th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

The first two responses by Leon and Cheryl sum up many of my experiences from the last four years when it comes to Yahoo! Mail customer/tech support.

While I can see that it’s inappropriate to email customer support out of the blue, I only reply to customer support via email when there is a pre-existing trouble report with a number assigned to it. In other words, I use the cumbersome process of paging through the help section until I am offered the option of contacting customer care via a form at which time my problem is assigned a number that I’m informed of when I get the inevitable unhelpful response. I then reply, via email, to said unhelpful response, with the assigned number included in the subject line of my email. So…when we get an unhelpful automated response completely unrelated to our problem, are we again supposed to go through the whole process of trying to find a help form to submit rather than send an email reply?

I also agree with the person who basically said that while it can be difficult to relate a technical problem to customer support, it seems implausible that each and every one of us is so inept at explaining things that customer support can’t get it on the first try.

I’m at a loss for a time when I emailed Yahoo! customer support about a technical glitch within my account and got a relevant response. It is frustrating but I have found it to be true of almost all email correspondence with almost all companies. The customer reps just do not thoroughly read the emails, whether the emails are detailed or succinct. I prefer to call a toll-free number, no matter the company, because the agents are more responsive and seem to be able to understand things when the problem is spoken to them. Let’s face it: people don’t read much these days and the inability of people to understand and comprehend the written word is not what it used to be. That should be taken into effect along with our supposed inability to communicate effectively with the Yahoo! “brainiacs.” It goes both ways.

Lastly, many times the form that we’re asked to submit does not contain spaces for nearly as much detail as what was described in the main post. So…it’s not always our fault that customer support doesn’t get enough relevant information on the first try. If they want more relevant info, modify the submission forms.

I try not to “pile on” when the complain train gets going on these blog posts, but I had to put in my two cents this time. Sorry. :(

July 9th, 2008 at 6:58 am

Well, as long as the service works for the most part, I guess that’s all we can ask for. I would say that those that don’t pay for Mail Plus nor any of the other non-free services have no room to complain, and you’re pretty much a test load. Which is why I’m a Mail Plus customer. On the other hand, at only $20/yr., that’s scarcely enough justification to complain.
-
If Yahoo! ever wanted to get into a paying market, do a product like Apple’s .mac, soon to be MobileMe. I’m a Mac user, and if Apple ever made theirs cheaper, like $60/yr., I’d switch to them pronto.

July 10th, 2008 at 3:34 am

While I understand your reasoning, Leon, I’d have to disagree that we have no room to complain unless we’re paying for an account. Yahoo! makes money from the ads that we, the nonpaying account holders, have to look at for each page that we view. Mail Plus users don’t have to look at ads which is the main reason for the yearly fee.

July 10th, 2008 at 3:53 am

Well, I pay Yahoo $13/mth for web hosting. As part of the web hosting package, I get a set of e-mail accounts for my domain. For some reason, each of these e-mail accounts must also be linked to a regular Yahoo account. Currently, I am trying to get a problem fixed with POP3 access to one of the e-mail accounts for my domain. The problem is not with the domain account or the POP3 process, as I have explained 5 or 6 times already. The problem is with updating the password stored within my primary Yahoo account for one of the domain accounts. I have exchanged mail with the Web Hosting group, the Mail group, the Business Mail group, and the UK & Ireland Mail group. And each time my problem gets passed to a different group, I end up starting back at square one, even though all of the prior messages have been forwarded. As has been posted again and again, these people are not reading the messages they are being sent. They are just taking pot-shots at the problem and hoping that the problem is one of the average ones that happen everyday.

It’s sad.

July 10th, 2008 at 4:23 am

Question: Are the numbers within the subject lines of the Customer Care e-mail messages supposed to change?

I was originally under the impression that the number was for a particular case. However, it seems that each message I receive has a different number. So, I assume the number is for tracking that message and not the case.

Comments?

July 10th, 2008 at 9:46 pm

so much to read

July 11th, 2008 at 9:45 am

I’m not very pleased with the Customer Care (regarding Yahoo Mail). I’m not focusing on my customer-care problem but on the inefficiency of the service:
I’ve got an annoyance with the RSS feeds (can’t delete them – persistent error) that just doesn’t get fixed. I filled a form for Customer Care and I gave all the details about the problem that I possibly could.
I received a standard answer in my inbox instructing me how to delete the feeds in a number of ways and stating that I hadn’t provided enough information.
I have replied to that message trying to give details once more, but I didn’t get any answer after that.
Fortunately, the mail runs smoothly in every other aspect. I wish Customer Care would’ve had, as well.

July 12th, 2008 at 9:58 am

hey Ryan i hear my all friends you have so nice ass ?
is it right ? can u please show me your naked ass in a webcam ? i love masturbating on your ass :x
pm me on this id : one_and_only_sean@yahoo.com

i wait for see your ass :X i can pay for it :x

July 13th, 2008 at 3:53 am

Well, after finally getting someone to actually look at my problem, they say that Yahoo Mail isn’t designed for accessing Yahoo Business Mail via POP3 (a function that I have been using for the last 2 or 3 years).

They might as well as sell out to Microsoft if they are doing to do business like that.

July 13th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Forms – what forms. The email link doesn’t work on the customer care page. My Contacts have been temporarily suspended for weeks – a temporary error code 100 – not mentioned anywhere.
There is no phone number to ring either.
Yahoo Mail is a failing service – Microsoft should run away – now.

July 14th, 2008 at 10:45 am

I have tried to call Customer Care and I have sent the forms as you indicated because Yahoo continues to bill me erroneously for a service that I did not sign up for. To date, there has been no resolution and so I am inclined to close my account altogther because Yahoo has been so unresponsive and frankly my association with this company has resulted in fraud on my account.

July 15th, 2008 at 12:10 am

I do not know how to reach the board who is responsible of brain storming new ideas. I do not know if I am at the right place for this type of question.

I would like to ask for yahoo mail to also include with all contact an option to add photos to the contact list? I have a lot of johns and some times I can’t remember which last name goes with which John. It gets crazy because I have a lot of Johns.

July 16th, 2008 at 9:10 am

Sorry Ryan but the canned answer to a question sucks. While I did get a reply in less than 24 hours from the form I submitted last night, I might as well have not received anything! The reply was simply a link to a FAQ page on using e-mail…gee thanks, if the answer was in there I most likely would not have submitted my issue.

Then again, my issue was not really a problem as much as it is a complete and utter frustration with having to enter a character string EVERYTIME I have to send an e-mail now…Google here I come!

July 16th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

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.

July 16th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

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.

July 18th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

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.

July 18th, 2008 at 11:15 pm

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.

July 19th, 2008 at 1:08 am

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.

July 21st, 2008 at 3:28 pm

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.

July 30th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

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..

August 14th, 2008 at 11:14 pm

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………

August 17th, 2008 at 7:49 am

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.