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:

• 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;
• 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;
• 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.