Overwhelmingly Geek™

I’ve been a very loyal Yahoo! fan from way back since 1999. I host a number of my essential business applications with Yahoo (DNS/MX records for this domain) and also have all my photos on the excellent Flickr web site; that aside from my daily usage of numerous other Yahoo services: Mail, Calendar, Pipes, My Yahoo, Buzz, Music, Video and others. What used to be a fantastic company with excellent customer service, has gone from being an innovator to the big bad dinosaur of the Internet. Surprisingly, Microsoft offered to purchase the company for a lot of cash, but they held out – I suspect Microsoft is better off (they seem to have numerous innovative applications coming out recently).

Over the last year, my frustrations with Yahoo’s ageing services have mounted. I’ve been hosting business email with Y! for almost 3 years – over which period the mail application has received one trivial update (still more needs to be done); however face-lifting one piece of software isn’t enough in the current Internet age – where fast moving competitors such as Google are releasing products that iterate/evolve a lot faster that most of its competitors.

While mail received a facelift, the ancillary services, for example – calendaring and the account management control panel all look like they’re from the 90′s.

Additionally, the email application lacks proper POP3 support (when I say proper – I mean the ability for Yahoo to store email sent via POP3 in the ‘Sent’ mail folder) and no IMAP support, making Yahoo’s Business email less and less useful compared to Google’s offerings. A migration for all business email customers was due in August 2008 (I’m still waiting – if the system is truly exceptional, I will consider staying… otherwise I’m switching to Google Apps as soon as my Y! contract is over).

The final nail in the coffin is their absolutely shit customer service – here’s the usual process:

1. You have problem with X
2. You contact customer support
3. You get an automated email response saying that your problem will be dealt with within 24 hours
4. 24 hours later, you receive ANOTHER email saying that your query was received, and that it will be dealt with in 24 hours
5. 4 – 5 days later, when you’ve figured out workarounds for all the problems, you receive an unhelpful response from Yahoo customer support
6. You respond requesting further clarification
7. Receive second response saying that it will not be possible to help due to limitations/insert/other/excuse within the current system
8. ??? Limitations WTF ???

If Yahoo! doesn’t up its game soon, it’ll be the death of what was once a great company. This would be a real shame, especially considering how much I used to admire this company & love the brand (and still do… somewhat).

Update: The Yahoo Zimbra desktop looks like it could save Yahoo! Business email from being chucked into the digital dust-bin, although this will depend on their integration efforts.

Update No. 2: Heard back from customer support noting that my issues could not be solved and to call and discuss the problem with customer support in the US (yeah right!).