UPDATE: Within hours of posting this to Facebook, tweeting it directly to @yahoocare, and posting links in a couple of sites, I got emailed, tweeted, and called – by real humans at yahoo. The problem is now fixed. Power to the peeps, y’all.
I’ve never written a blog post dedicated to complaining about a company or product. Circumstances, however, force me to seek alternative routes to get the attention of a human at one particular organization. Any human will do. Yes, Yahoo, I am talking to you.
I lost access to my yahoo account weeks ago. I don’t know if I had some kind of brain zap and lost the memory of both my password and security answer, or whether my account has been compromised. But weeks ago I began with the tips posted on recovering account information. I no longer have access to the alternate email address I provided when I signed up with Yahoo a decade ago. When none of the tips proved helpful, I filled out the contact form online and provided a new alternate email. I couldn’t find any phone numbers listed to make an old-fashioned phone call.
I received an autoresponse, directing me to the aforementioned tips, and adding that if that didn’t help I should response to the Yahoo email. I responded. I have now sent 8 emails in the past few weeks and have yet to get a response of any kind.
I finally located phone numbers for the Yahoo customer service, by – wait for it – googling it. I called several times and each time the automated voice said that I was being transferred to a customer care agent, the line cut off.
I started Tweeting to Yahoo Customer Care. After several tweets I finally got a tweet back directing me to send them a direct message through Twitter. I tweeted a reminder to the social media geniuses that you can’t send a direct message to someone unless they are following you.
So, Yahoo now follows me on Twitter. I sent the direct message, and was told that a service agent would contact me through the alternate email (the one I already used 8 times). I tweeted them a reminder about that history and asked them to make sure a real human contacted me. The result? Another auto-response was emailed to my account. I wrote my 9th email in response.
This isn’t just a matter of personal emails. I have financial and legal documents attached to emails in my yahoo account. Yahoo has now convinced me to complete my transfer to Gmail. Neverthless, I still need my property back. If you know anyone at yahoo, please send them this blog so I can recover my account. My confidence in their product, their technical services, and their customer care is blown to bits. But I still need my documents and contacts before leaving their disastrous company well behind me.
