Yahoo! Mail Problem Finally Fixed
Looks like Yahoo! Mail finally fixed that annoying email filtering problem.
Everything seemed to work properly a few days ago, but given the rapid changes that went over there in the past I decided to give it some time. Well, some time has passed, and everything still looks fine.
I don’t know if they’ve solved what caused the problem, or just put in a proper workaround, but if I can’t see the problem I don’t have a problem.
Which means that as long as I don’t need any support from Customer Care, and don’t have any questions, they’re again my favourite webmail provider.
December 16th, 2004 at 22:11 EET | Categories: Web |
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March 15th, 2006 at 18:07
I know these posts about your frustrations with Yahoo mail’s customer service are somewhat old. Nevertheless, they brought a smile to my face when I found them while searching for more information on a problem I am having with my own Yahoo email account. Naturally, customer service was no help at all (their Kana bot is still in charge). Would you like to hear about the lack of help I got from them? (It’s not my first encounter with them, but for brevity’s sake I’ll limit my comments to this more recent encounter.) For several days now I have been receiving SPAM emails into my inbox that have the little rolodex icon next to the sender’s name. That icon is supposed to indicate that the sender is someone in my Yahoo address book (which explains why they get filtered into my Inbox instead of my Bulk folder). Of course, these senders are not nor have they ever been in my Yahoo address book. Obviously, they have found a way to fool Yahoo’s system. These emails are on different subjects and coming from several different email addresses all claiming to be from the Yahoo domain. I mark them as SPAM, but since they keep using different addresses to send, I don’t see that this does much good. If they really are coming from Yahoo accounts, I am sure those accounts are getting shut down, but what I’d like to know is this: Is Yahoo aware that these scammers have found a way to fool my mailbox into thinking these emailers are in my address book? Are they working on a way to stop them from continuing this practice? It would seem to me that this would be an important security issue for Yahoo.
I searched their Help pages in vain for any information on this problem. I decided to use one of their contact forms that is designed to report email abuse. I gave them all the info about one of the first emails I received and pointed out my concern about the rolodex icon appearing next to an email sender who WAS NOT IN MY ADDRESS BOOK. Their response was typically canned and irrelevent to my concern — something about them taking disciplinary action against the person’s Yahoo account for sending SPAM. No comment at all about my real concern. After receiving several more of these emails with the phony rolodex icon, I tried again to warn Yahoo of this serious issue (I’m nothing if not persistent!) This time I used the “contact us” form at the bottom of their Help page about rolodex icons. I explained the problem as clearly as I have here. Their response? Well, they certainly didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know — and even if I hadn’t known it, I could have easily found out on their Help pages. They explained how to use the “Spam” button, how to set up filters, how to block specific email addresses, and how to forward emails to their abuse dept (already tried that one without any success!). Sigh!
Well, I still don’t know if Yahoo is aware of the problem or not, but being an optomist I will hope that they are (in spite of my failure to get their attention). In fact, for the first time in several days there were no emails in my inbox this morning with phony rolodex icons next to them. So maybe they’ve already solved the issue — or maybe the scammer/spammers are just taking a day off. Only time will tell.
I have to add a little postscript to this. I have been using Yahoo mail for years, and in general I like it very well. It is certainly far preferable to Hotmail. I suppose since my account is free, I shouldn’t expect better customer service from their help department. Still, since my everyday work involves evaluating customer service, I can’t help but be appalled by this fake helpdesk of theirs.
–V
March 16th, 2006 at 0:21
Hello, Vonette.
Thanks for the story. It is indeed typical of the behaviour I’m used to getting from their customer support. For some strange reason whenever I have a problem with Yahoo Mail I still try to contact them, and this is always what it looks like. On the good side, sometimes I do manage in the end to get them to notice what I’m talking about, and some of the issues got resolved.
Including a recent problem, just this week, with some older email messages that became unavailable. The replies from the customer support kept being clueless and irrelevant, but at the same time they did pass it to someone who fixed the problem. They didn’t notice it was fixed until I actually notified them myself and thanking them, but as long as the problem was resolved, that’s alright.
If your problem isn’t solved, you should just put the focus on trying to get it to someone technical, instead of trying to get a response. They don’t seem to be able to provide useful responses. Maybe try to be very minimal, not adding any details at all beyond that you’re seeing Rolodex images next to senders who are not in your address book. Don’t mention the word spam, or any other word you can avoid, so as not to get the canned responses served for those keywords. Who knows, it might just help.
And yes, I do agree that the actual mail service is overall pretty good. They are doing a fine job with it. It’s just the customer service which is terrible.