I'M A DAD!!! As of 16.11.03 I have a beautiful baby girl called Satine Clare Pemberton!
I'M A DAD!!! As of 16.11.03 I have a beautiful baby girl called Satine Clare Pemberton!
Member since:21.02.2003
Reviews:39
Members who trust:26
For the record, I have used Yahoo! email for about five or six years now, the same address etc. That makes me quite a loyal user for the internet.
The URL is http://mail.yahoo.com
Let me tell you the good things about Yahoo! before I pull them to pieces...
1/ Well; it's free. 2/ It's accessible from virtually any computer anywhere in the world. 3/ I find it very user friendly and intuitive to use. 4/ Once you join then your user name and password link to a whole raft of other value added services ranging from Yahoo Briefcase (which allows you to upload 30mb of files onto the net) to Yahoo Games and a personalised version of Yahoo the search engine. 5/ Yahoo! is a solid brand, floated
on the NYSE and therefore carries some re-assurance in terms of financial stability and values. Good PR is important for them in what is a cut-throat industry. 6/ You get 6mb of storage space in your email which is more than most. 7/ You can attach files to your email of up to 1.5mb. 8/ You get to add a whole range of folders to your email and even personalise the way it all looks etc with nice pastel colours.
Sounds perfect so far doesn't it?
Now, Yahoo! makes its money from a range of revenue streams. A lot of these come from its email services. For example, you can pay to upgrade your account to receive 30mb of storage or pay extra to buy additional spam filters. I actually tried to do this some time ago but their pay server went down about 3 times and I lost the urge to do it in the end...I am now glad I didn't.
Yahoo, for want of better words, are their advertisers bitches. Everywhere on, in, within, around or even close to your email is infested with advertising, be it banners, interstitials, superstitials etc. That is to be expected though because after all, they do offer a free service in the main with lots of good features.
However, where Yahoo! infringe on my life is with their cunning Bulk Mail folder. What they have done is go to the Spam broadcasters and say, "ok guys, pay us a load of cash and we wont block the spam, we'll actually encourage it and help it get through. What we will do is create a folder in all our users inboxes called "Bulk Mail". Spam will be routed there rather than us trying to fight it off and after a month, we will automatically delete it if the user hasn't read it. By the way, pay us a bit more and we will tell you if the user has read it, how long they kept it in their folder, whether or not they moved it to their main inbox etc. We'll even supply you with their demographics and pyschographics since they provided them to us on sign up and on an ongoing basis with their usage, types of subscriptions etc. If you don't pay then we will try to block your email".
The bastards.
To be fair though, up until recently though, I have been able to stomach this because I've used them for so long, it's a ball ache to change etc. I tended to get about 45 bulk emails a day, mostly about 1k, 2k etc and you just delete them periodically.
However, I am now receiving over 5Mb of Spam per day at the moment, all into my bulk folder. This is mainly due to this virus as I get about 40 of these emails per day and they're all over 100k each. This means my 6mb quota is being exceeded each and every day and genuine emails from friends etc are being bounced back because my mailbox is full. You could argue that this is not Yahoo's fault but I tell you this; I know for a fact that they have the ability to screen out any emails with this virus in but because a lot of them are coming from their spam customers, they wont do anything about it. They encourage the Spam, they help perpetuate the emails lists these scumbags use and even tell them whether names on the list are active or not. Yahoo! doesn't bounce back the spam to my account...they let my account go up to 8mb or more as long as it is making them money.
So what have I done? Well, I have tried to communicate with customer services numerous times. Problem is everything is automated including the responses so no joy there. Try as I may I have not been able to get a genuine response from a human being at Yahoo! and it is so frustrating because they do have a lot of good going for them and I want them to just fix things.
Do you know what was the final straw? Well, if you receive Spam from another Yahoo account you are supposed to forward it to abuse@yahoo.com. So I did and guess what...they bounced it back saying it had a virus in it!!!! Un-fucking-believable.
I'm not going to waste my time with them anymore, it is aggrevating me and their brand is forever tainted with me as far as I'm concerned. If anyone can recommend a decent free email service with manageable levels of advertising and spam then please let me know.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Never had a yahoo account but sounds like I never want to!! I've got hotmail which I get spammed quite alot in but they've got a new block feature (isn't up to much), I've used talk21 for a few years now as well which isn't so great for blocking spam but you can set some up... these 2 are free accounts but I've also got a .....@'myname'.me.uk account which is paid for but really cheap and great to use as there's NO spam (probably cos I've not filled in any online surveys with this address) and I've had it for about a year... good luck with a new one :)
SRowlands 25.03.2004 12:49
I've noticed that Yahoo have stopped allowing POP3 downloads, such as Outlook, unless you pay them for it ! Gits !!!
madel09 14.02.2004 20:06
I have had hotmail and yahoo for yrs now and never really had a problem with spam, especially not with yahoo. I guess you got a bum deal with the virus thingy tho :( what a pain!
Advantages: Free, Web-based means you can check anywhere, can set up for many accounts Disadvantages: Bit of advertising, occasionally slow or unreliable
Pleb 25.09.2001 ·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of yahoo.com
Sep 5th, 2003
(Sep 7th, 2003)
very helpful by (98%):
helpful by (2%):
