Thoughts of the day.
yahoo.com & amazon.com aggraivation
Published on December 16, 2004 By Zamise In Websites
Yahoo has pissed me off before on this with their web hosting services. I do not need to manage my domain that often, which was taken over by yahoo some time ago from another host, but anyway I forget where to go and the info to log in because of that. So I check all over yahoos site, there is no easy way to get support from them if the answer is not in their FAQs. The most frustrating moment is when I get an automated email telling me the same information I've already seen in their FAQs and the best part is, I'm paraphrasing: "If you forgot your ID than search for your ID to find it". I forgot my ID and everything about my logon ID, it just seemed so rediculos at that moment. I'm ready to move to another host, problem there is limits, I've got a special deal through yahoo you cant get because of the contract I purchased they bought and must uphold. I've a lifetime garuntee on no bandwidth or space limits, you just cant find that for $10 a month anywhere else. So you can see why the original company went under, and then decided to pop back up a few years later after they sold those contracts to yahoo.

Long story short, what a pain in the butt. All I'm really trying to do is get rid of AOL and use my domains email services. Just sick of AOLs bulkyness too. AOL needs a light version with email, chat, and a few other minor features and services, about what they were likeon AOL 3.0. No need though if I can get into my yahoo domain.

Oh yes, if you buy stuff through Amazon.com and decide to send your recent purchase ratings to your friends or post anywhere, just so you know to watch out for this, there is a privacy issue you won't know about untill its too late. It uses an area you log in to called "about you" for this. Notice it says "about you", it says that to you because you are logged in to it with a cookie and its cache on your computer, however when you send it out or how the public views it, it defaults to say "about" then your full name on your credit card. The public can view this, and you have no idea because you can not see what they see unless you clear your cookies and cache out. I've been working on getting it to display just my nickname, or handel to the public along with my purchase recomendations which has not been easy, and not sure if it is even possible yet. Until then I'm sure not going to post my recomendations to my internet buddies even though it is currently viewable to the public. I'll remain secure through obscurity for now I hope.

more later...

Comments
on Dec 16, 2004
Perhaps yahoo realizes what a deal you have and instead of breaking the contract are intentionally making the service less easy to use in the hopes you'll give up and go away?
on Dec 17, 2004
Please listen Yahoo Dude!

If I had the correct information you have listed below, and that you have listed in your FAQs, and that you have on a web page for getting logged in incase I have forggoten my ID & or password, which if I had I would not need to give it to you for finding my ID so I can logon and get access into my domain, which is domain name.

Maybe if you can type a little on your keyboard and look around a bit on your side, that I would think you guys keep this information somewhere, you can give me at least the right logon ID, for which I probably do have the Password to it. If you don't trust that I am the owner of domain name, understandable, can you please maybe provide me a phone number so I can call and talk to someone who can hopefully verify me with some other information than what is listed below. Thank You!

My real name
My domain name
email address




In a message dated 12/17/2004 2:17:32 PM Eastern Standard Time, Yahoo! Account Services writes:

>Hello,
>
>Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Account Services.
>
>In order for us to assist you in the most efficient manner possible, we
>will need you to provide all of the information requested below.
>Without the proper verification information, we may be unable to provide
>further assistance.
>
>Please reply to this email and provide all of the following:
>
>1. Yahoo! ID
>
>2. Date of birth (mm-dd-yyyy)
>
>3. ZIP/Postal Code
>
>4. Country
>
>5. The alternate email address that is currently listed
>
>6. Your new desired alternate email address, if it needs to be updated
>(please note that this address cannot be a Yahoo! Mail address)
>
>7. Challenge Question and Secret Answer, if applicable.
>
>Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.
>
>Regards,
>
>Johnson
>
>Yahoo! Customer Care
>
>For assistance with all Yahoo! services, please visit:
>
> http://help.yahoo.com/
>
>New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - better than ever!
>
>
>
>Original Message Follows:
>-------------------------
>
>Help Help Help I need help from a human being at Yahoo!!!!! Your
>automated response to my question is the same dumb info it gives on your
>web site. If I've forgot my ID, how can I search for it uhhh?!!! I
>know it can go off email and other info, but it aint working either. I
>have to get in to manage my domain, otherwise I'll have to transfer it
>to another host, that has easier to access support services. You guys
>should have a customer support info link on the main page and a lot of
>other places instead of making us dig around everywhere and jump through
>hoops. It would really help your customers, I've had this problem
>before, why do you guys make it so dificult to contact you? Original
>problem below:
>
>
>
>Original Message Follows:
>------------------------
>
>
>Mail-Id: 1103247414-1476
>
>Yahoo! ID: zamisers7k
>
>Question: What if I forgot my Yahoo! ID?
>
>Type your feedback here:
>I own the domain domain name
>which yahoo hosts for me. I want to
>start using email accounts with my
>domain. I had the logon info. stored
>on a PC that was destroyed, and I don't
>remember the logon ID or where to go to
>get logged in to manage my domain.
>Please help! I do beleive I remember
>the password though, but its been so
>long. Thanks!
>
on Dec 17, 2004
Danny, your probably right, however I think there is also more to it, as I do not think it is something personal to my contract. I beleive Yahoo, like many companies, wish to make it dificult to get ahold of them to minamise, or a crappy way of weeding out the idiots from ones with real problems. They hope is that the idiots will do some digging around and find what they need on their own before making it to a human being who can answer their question in 2 seconds hang up and say to the customer support person next them how stupid that last caller was. Automation of this sort alleviates the burdon of stupidity back on to its customers I beleive. I'll admit, ok stupid me, I forgot 1 of 223 ids & passwords that I don't use on a daily basis, but jeezus, give me a break. I guess at least they haven't replied to me in a foregn language yet. I give them one more response, and if I can't find someone with more than a pair of braincells at yahoo, I will likely switch. Looking at a place called Catalog.com. Look at it, a Support tab right on their opening page, with even a real persons name to get ahold of for support and trouble tickets. I've had some experience with dealing with this host, and they seem pretty decent. Even with limits, at least I know I'll get some halfway helpfull support.
on Dec 19, 2004
Here is the last response from them:

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Account Services.

Our system is not able to locate an account ID without the alternate
email address associated with it. If you do not have an alternate email
address listed on your account, our system will be unable to find your
ID. In this case, you will have to open a new account.

If you have searched online for your ID and were not successful, then
you either do not have an alternate email address listed or are not
matching the verification information listed on this account. In both
cases, we will be unable to locate your ID, and you will need to sign up
for a new account.

We encourage you to use our system to search with all alternate email
addresses you have had in the past and may have listed on your Yahoo!
account.

If you no longer have access to the alternate email address listed on
the Yahoo! account, please reply to this email with the following
verification information. We will do our best to locate the account, but
you may need to simply re-register with a new ID.

Please reply to this email and provide all of the following:

1. The date of birth listed on the account (mm-dd-yyyy)

2. ZIP/Postal code

3. Country

4. The alternate email address that is currently listed

5. Your new desired alternate email address; if it needs to be updated
(please note that this address cannot be a Yahoo! Mail address)

6. Challenge Question and Secret Answer, if applicable.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Floyd

Yahoo! Customer Care

For assistance with all Yahoo! services, please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/

New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - better than ever!
on Dec 19, 2004
Why can they not locate an ID associated with a domain name. Its so simple, I'd of rather them just said they can't figure it out. I'm switching, no need to deal with this kind of aggravation for something that should be so simple. My last response to them was that they are idiots. I'm going to have to switch hosts now, looking forward to the extra benifts of added services, such as human responses, but not looking forward to the limits. I think I'm going to go with a windows xp host so I can add multiple ftp logons, so I've been told can only be done with xp servers for some reason on a hosting site. A whole bunch of other things like extensions, cgi, and yeah I can get mine and probably like 1000 free email acounts under my domain if I really need that many heh. Goodbye dipfargs at yahoo!
on Dec 19, 2004
Ok by pure freaking blind luck almost I ran into figureing out how to get logged into my yahoo webservices to manage my junk.

Beleive it or not, I was prepareing to move, still will likely maybe just not today though, I pinged my url so I could get my domains IP. The idea was I was going to give it out so people, friends, anyone who would want to abuse yahoo could upload to it via ftp, which I've always had the logon ID & a password for ftping. FTPing is difrent than their console log id and password by the way. Well anyway, I decided to throw the IP in a browser, thinking it would pull up my site like if I typed in the domain name. Guess what I got:


Error
Sorry, you have reached either a non-existent site or the site has been suspended (or deactivated) due to Disk Space Violation / Exceeded.

Site Owner: Please refer to this help page for information.


This was very interesting, so I clicked on the help page and it brought me to a sight that told me to log in here:

https://console.website.yahoo.com/

Fargin amazing! Guess what, I put in what I thought was right ID and password on like the 3 try and bam I got into my web hosting "console".

What a massive pain, and no thanks to any worthy help from yahoo. My God I've got 3 quarter gig on my domain. Time to do some house cleaning.
on Dec 20, 2004
Yahoo had the balls to email me asking me to review their customer service. I'm sure it was all automated like the rest of the crud wanking emails I got from them, so no balls, or brains, were really involved in Yahoos part. I ranked everything poor, except the response time, of course it doesnt take long to have such dumb responses so that shouldn't even matter. Well, I'm in process of transfering my domain now. Lets see what other kinds of troubles will pop up in the process. I noticed I was paying $20 a month on yahoo, not $10 like I had thought, and my new service will be $10 and I'll get a lot more features. Although, I'm hopeing I won't go over the Gig storage limit, and 40gig transfer rate. Just don't like the idea of limits, especially transfer rates like I can control how many people download stuff from it. The more the better you would think, maybe I'm wrong and its just up&down from site maintance, that would be cool, but I don't think thats the case. I'll see I suppose. Oh the Amazon issue not resolved yet but don't care so much, who wants to know what junk I've purchased anyway, probably one of those TMI (too much information) conditions like my blog. Done with this thread.