I remember how innocent I was, long before I was a parent. Do you remember that time? When you were young, perhaps it was the 80s, or the early 90s. You imagined bringing a baby into your home one day, certainly, it was far off in the future but the image was clear, if a bit soft-focused around the edges: all was fuzzy, wuzzy, warm, soft, and gentle. If you imagined your home with a kitchen, in fact, the knives were all tucked safely away in a hand-oiled maple block somewhere, way, way back on the counter.

[Big sound of brakes squeaking, wheels skidding, cars smashing into walls, screams...]

And then, I became a parent in the new millennium. And my world was filled with the most fearsome, warlike cutting implements. Industrial-strength scissors that came apart at the hinge so you could sharpen them daily. Hunting knives with a whetting stone, glistening next to the sink (where I keep my gentle organic hand soap). A typical day in my first child's infancy might find my knuckles raw, my fingers calloused, battle wounds all over my fingers.

I'd been faced with my children's toy packaging.

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.