Frustration with Yahoo Small Business

Last year I registered 200+ domain names with Yahoo. It was cheap and efficient, and all is well... until last week.

I had changed my American Express card number and as a result, when the domain names are up for renewal this year, the system alerted me on outdated information. I tried to update my payment information, and to my surprise there is no way to update all the payment methods at once. Domains' payment information can be updated one at a time only, which is a fundamental UI flaw.

To make matters worse, when I clicked on the link to update my information, the site would consistently return a blank page that leads to no where, and I am unable to update anything. I tried refreshing the page but again nothing happens.

In my frustration, I tried contacting support on the phone, and had been on hold for two hours without any assistance, and the call will then be terminated by the system. There are no email support available, and all the meanwhile I am receiving account suspension notices and my domains are failing one by one, a truly frustrating experience.

Here's when the nightmare begin: when I signed up for the service, the domains were 9.95/year. I just received emails telling me that starting on 2008-07-01, the renewals will cost me 34.95/year. If I were unable to cancel my accounts by that date, I will be paying upwards of close to $10,000 for domain names.

Do you have any suggestions as to what I might do? Alternatively, do you know if there is an email where I can reach customer support?


©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe

Skip the VUI

You know the drill: you had to call customer service for your cable, your bank, your ISP, your medical insurance, or your cellphone company. You call the 1-800 number and now you are stuck with the VUI (voice user interface). It's another annoying thing in life that you really won't want to deal with.

Well, now you can skip the phone trees. Here's how it works (from BRINGO: Stop Talking to Machines and Talk to Real Human):

1. Find the company you'd like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, loans, health care)


2. Enter your phone # (we will never disclose your phone number to anyone, not even your mother!).


3. Wait a few seconds while we navigate the phone tree.


4. When we call you back, pick up your phone and you're done. No more phone trees.

All the major banks (Citi, Bank of America, etc), Credit cards (Amex, Capitol One, etc), Mobile (Sprint, Cingular, etc), Airlines (Air France, UA, Delta, JAL, etc) are all listed with this service and I suspect that the list will only keep growing as businesses try to demonstrate that the customer is king.