Thanks for stopping by! Hey, why don't you do what all the cool kids are doing and subscribe to my RSS feed? You know you want to, so go ahead, be bad, be very very bad... :) Thanks.
I signed up for a Yahoo! Mail email address in 1998. I have used that email address as my primary personal email address from signing up till Gmail was released. I still use my Yahoo! Mail address because there are just so many people who have that address for me since I have had it for so long. Unfortunately, I have made the decision that I am going to start notifying people of my Gmail address because Yahoo! Mail has plummeted to levels that I cannot take anymore.
Yahoo! as a company confuses me in so many different ways. They created way back when all these great properties that recently seem to be dying a slow and painful death while they continue to buy new properties which then very soon after purchasing them they begin that very long walk off of a short cliff. I just don’t get it. Has Yahoo! forgotten about user experience? Do they actually think that they know what their users want? Because trying to actually find somewhere to submit feedback and actually get some sort of response is a near impossibility.
Today, I actually went to the Yahoo! Mail Blog. And like a bad dream I discovered that they do not even allow comments on their blog!?!?!?! A blog that the only reason it was created was to communicate with it’s users on their product does not allow their readers to actually comment. It’s like a freaking Greek tragedy…
So before my Yahoo! Mail account becomes my spam email permanently, I would like to list out why I believe Yahoo! Mail has gone from the best web email program to the absolute worst.
1. The front page is slower than my grandmother and she has been dead for ten years. Why do I have to wait for my local weather to load to go read my emails? Did I ask for local weather? Did anyone?
2. Does the SPAM button actually do anything? Come on, be honest, you guys are just deleting the messages and have absolutely no spam control whatsoever. That seems to be the only logical explanation on why I get the same damn spam almost everyday when the senders name and email address never change…
3. Why is it when you ask for feedback, you send us to your Yahoo! Tutorials page? See I did not ask for a tutorial. I actually understand how to send email, to be honest, I think I understand it much better than most of the people you have working on the Yahoo! Mail team. If you actually want feedback, then provide me a way to give feedback. If you are not interested which obviously you are not, THEN DON’T ASK FOR IT!
4. Why oh why don’t you have a target=”_blank” in your code? If someone sends me a link in an email and I do not right click and choose open in a new tab I will leave my email totally. Do you want us to stay within Yahoo! or not?
5. Finally, what the hell is this?
Why is it that every time I type in a person’s name in the TO: line and you actually find that person from my address book it still gives me this error message? Why is it that every time I send an email I have to remove the person’s name and just have their email address in the TO: line to actually be able to send?
Yahoo! Mail, you took what should of been your flagship and have turned it into a second class citizen of cyberspace. Shame on you.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, spam
Related Articles:
While I agree with you on the sorry state of affairs at Yahoo, I’d point out that Google’s Official Blog also does not accept comments - http://googleblog.blogspot.com
I could not agree more Cord. I gave up on Yahoo! Mail and the only reason I have it at all is for Fantasy Baseball/Football purposes and a place to send all my spam.
I can’t stand going to MyYahoo! seeing an email that I happen to want to read - clicking on THAT email link - then having to deal with your first point about weather and banner ad load times only to click again on ‘INBOX’ to click one more time on the email I originally wanted to read!
It’s nice to see somebody get the Cord pulled on them again.
“The front page is slower than my grandmother and she has been dead for ten years.”
An oldie, but a goodie.
Now that’s an Idea. PullTheCord.org.
People who are outraged about something notify you in the comments and every week you investigate a couple of them and doll out severe text lashings where necessary.
It would entertainingly raise awareness and call out injustice.
However, it would do a number on your blood pressure.
Just in case, I purchased it for you.
Great post! It seems the more I embrace “advances” and “updates” in the online tools I use, the more frustrated I become. I recently had to pull the plug on blogspot.com because of similarly annoying flubs. ITunes is not far behind!
Sherwin - You are absolutely right… That is such a great example of Yahoo! assuming that we want our local weather instead of giving us the power to choose whether we want to wait for all their other BS windows to load.
Adam - Great idea!! No worries about the blood pressure, I will be fine. Let’s definitely talk…
Chris - I absolutely agree with your frustration. Again I think it comes down to simply, there are so many companies who assume they know what we as consumers want, but usually they are wrong.
Thanks for the comments!
While you are giving Yahoo you know what for their e-mail problems don’t forget their music jukebox a worse program has not been invented. It opens about half the time and the other half opens in that same time frame as the grandmother you mentioned. I deleted this mess a month ago and use windows media player.
You’re right Fred… Good point. Now put down the computer and take the dog out for a walk.
Adam - I am sorry for the delay in your comment being posted. For some reason, it got caught in my spam filter. To answer your comment, I don;t think comparing Google’s main blog to Yahoo! Mail’s blog is a true apple to apple comparison. Yahoo’s blog is geared towards just Yahoo! Mail which presently they are listing that product as a Beta which at least that means to me that they are still editing and hopefully making it better. Which I would think feedback from their users should be a very important factor, but that is just me.
Thanks for the comment.
I totally agree, but am wondering why you didn’t mention the ANNOYING advertisements they recently added all over the Mail page! If I see one more flashing banner while trying to open an email message I’m gonna… switch to Gmail! (Actually I already did that, about 2 hours ago. No more Yahoo for me!)
Bonnie - I agree with you the banners are annoying, but I can’t really knock Yahoo! for that. They need to make money and they are offering Mail for free. They have every right to put banners up. The people who should be taken out and shot are the agencies all around this country who are creating these terrible banners and actually thinking people will click on them.
Welcome to Gmail!! Thanks for the comment.
heheh I went off my head trying to deal with Yahoo Small Business after I stupidly decided to buy webhosting off them. For starters, only one domain was allowed on my account and site navigation was as confusing as heck!
Recently, I noticed that Yahoo! Mail was changing my addresses within my email to a single line.
For instance:
Joe Nobody
123 Maple Street
Anywhere, NY 12345
Would be changed to:
Joe Nobody, 123 Maple Street, Anywhere, NY 12345
This annoyed me since I usually will format my own emails for a particular reason.
However, Yahoo! has this new “feature” which allows the user to click on stuff inside his emails; and so the software just reformats the emails so it can more easily put a square peg into a round hole.
I guess that would be a much easier program for their outsourced minimum wage code monkeys to write.
Obviously, I was very frustrated with this new system and so I decided politely to ask the Yahoo! help desk for instructions on how to turn off this “feature” (read “bug”).
Their response was to explain to me the process for creating a signature file which I could include at the bottom of my emails.
I responded that I did not want a signature and described again the problem I was having.
Their response was to explain to me that “yes you can indeed create a signature and here is how to do it”.
After several further attempts I finally realized that either Yahoo! has outsourced it’s help desk to a remote village in India which only recently has been connected to the magical electrical grid or the Yahoo! help desk is entirely automated.
I would think the later is correct since the responses I get always remind me of the “Eliza” automated psychiatrist program I bought for my TRS-80 (Model I, Level I) in the early 1980’s.