For years I've hosted my company's web site and e-mail system on Yahoo! Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) Website Services. Yesterday I had yet another unannounced e-mail outage.
Specifically, I was able to receive e-mails but my outgoing e-mails did not reach their intended destination. This happens to me about three or four times a year. And it happened most recently back in September. There are three problems with this that make me really angry:
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The only way for me to find out that I have the problem is if I happen to speak to the recipient and ask them what they thought of the e-mail, only to find out they didn't receive it;
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Yahoo! does not respond to my e-mails sent to its customer support address. I don't know whether that address is broken or whether they receive my complaint and just don't bother to reply;
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Unless the e-mail problem becomes more frequent, I am somewhat locked in to Yahoo! Website Services because I don't want to take the time to rebuild my entire website -- which is written in a proprietary tool called PageBuilder -- on another hosting service and change my business cards with a new domain name.
Am I alone in these complaints? Is there a truly reliable provider out there to which it would be worth switching? Even though Yahoo! has been behind the innovation curve for years, it has succeeded in creating a new customer emotion: Yahoo! e-mail rage. I've got it and I'd love to find a way never to experience it again.
Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, and a Professor of Management at Babson College. He has no financial interest in Yahoo! securities.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-07-2006 @ 3:44PM
bobby said...
check out www.smtp.com an easy, inexpensive fix to your outgoing mail problems
11-07-2006 @ 6:29PM
LM said...
I also use Yahoo for many web services (business email, calendar & address book) - I have been loyal for years - they are finally close to pushing to a new portal - check out www.netvibes.com
11-07-2006 @ 7:14PM
John Shackelford said...
I brought my company's website to Yahoo about a year ago after figuring out that they provide great value compared to what we were paying before. Have not noticed any of the issues you desribe. Been very happy with the move to Yahoo.
11-08-2006 @ 12:53AM
Chip Chick said...
While I don't have the same problem as you do, I am signed up for their premium email service and for the past 2 months I have not been able to retrieve emails from any pop3 accounts. I've emailed their tech support several times and have not received a response. It's very frustrating and it has forced me to switch back to free G-mail.
11-07-2006 @ 10:01PM
Terry said...
I've always used yahoo for email, but it seems since it became AT&T Yahoo, its horrible.
11-09-2006 @ 11:24AM
bruce gigarjian said...
We have had horrible problems with our emails not being able to get out and Yahoo swears it's a Comcast problem and Comcast claims it's Yahoo... We use Comcast as our internet provider. Outgoing emails sit in the Outlook outbox and it seems the only way to get them out is to shut down Outlook and re-start it. Today that solution also failed and a Network Password box keeps popping up on the screen. Does anyone have a solution to this? Sounds like a Yahoo problem but perhaps there is some email virus out there? We run Grisoft anti-virus on our machines and have run scans with no problems discovered.
11-11-2006 @ 3:30PM
Rose said...
Your not alone in your complaints. Remember that no company is 100 % stable.
11-19-2006 @ 11:26AM
Hazel Blears said...
You are not alone. I've experienced this a couple of times. But not recently though. Although I did experience some weird stuff on yahoo messenger. Wrong recipients but correct address. Very very strange. Dangerous too. I could've been giving confidential information to the wrong person. I hope yahoo does something about these problems.
11-21-2006 @ 8:47PM
jojo said...
thats why I use AOL mail, always have.... always will*