I love Yahoo! I’ve been with them since 2000, and their free web-based email is one of a kind.
In fact I’ve been so excited that I pay them $25 a year for Mail Plus, with better Spam protection and the fact I don’t get bamboozled by freaking adverts anymore. A good price to pay I think.
However, contacting Yahoo! isn’t as easy as you might think – as I found out the hard way.
Here’s what happened:
In a moment of weakness I discovered their Small Business Package for another $35 a year, which in principal sounded great, so I decided to buy it – only to find out that I didn’t need it – and in fact never used it.
My idea was to send mails that “appear to come from” another email address using the excellent Yahoo! webmail interface, a feature that Mail Plus already has built-in. I only found that out after I had hit the ORDER button. So I grumbled the loss of my money, cancelled the service, and a year goes by.
That time has come, and I’ve just realised that I’ve been billed AGAIN by Yahoo! Again for another year, and again I won’t need that service. The money would be much better spent on a Flickr Pro account, so what would be easier than to get in touch with Yahoo! and ask them for a refund.
Trying that turns out to be impossible though. You CAN’T contact Yahoo – all you can do is browse the gigantic help section featuring ready-made questions. No good for what I’m trying to accomplish.
However, for Small Business Cusomters they DO offer email and phone help – so I thought, since I’ve BEEN a Small Business Customer for the last year and a bit, I’d be eligible.
WRONG!
Want to know why? Because as of 30 seconds ago, I am NO LONGER a Small Business customer, having cancelled my account for good measure. Not only have I thrown money away once, I’ve done it TWICE now…
I’ve spent the last hour being chased around in circles on the Yahoo! site, only to find out that their refund policy is “YOU WON’T EVER GET ANY REFUNDS FROM US – EVER”.
Seems almost pointless to speak to someone at Yahoo (even if I could).
Lesson learnt:
How Yahoo! is making money… by ripping punks like me off, that’s what we’ve learnt!
Yahoo! is not as good as it seems after all… what a shame. Will I ever get a refund, or a “service-swap”? Unlikely.
Will I be billed AGAIN next year? The way things are going, probably.