Hey Yahoo! Stop the sucks!

A few months back, I can't say precisely when, but as best I can remember is was the end of October, I tried to log in to my Yahoo! Mail account to retrieve a password. This password was auto generated alphabet soup by a website and, with random combinations of letters and numbers, I usually leave it up to mail accounts to remember such things, because something like "J3G9mT5Ea" is not exactly easy for my brain to regurgitate on demand.

Back to the end of October. I go to login to Yahoo! Mail and, due to Yahoo's infinite wisdom, I could not log into my account because of "Error Code 1." What are the chances. Of all all the possible errors on earth, I get the first one - must be my lucky day. So to report this error I have to go to a special page. Then I fill this page out with all the pertinent information. "Code 1 or Code 2?" "Wow," I said, "only 2 possible errors on the entire system." 'Tis an amazing system when only two things could possible go wrong.

Wait 2 weeks. No response. I try again.

Then wait 2 weeks. Nothing.

Hmmm... It must be me. I must be experiencing a personal "Error Code 34523." These things happen. So I called support, Christi in the living room, and she made me a cup of tea.

Ok, time to fill out a the error page differently. The only thing I could do differently is change the email address. Used my Gmail account - ironic no? I can depend on my Gmail account.

Wait 2 days. I got a response.

I must stop at this point and say that the email correspondence with the Yahoo! support was always prompt and very cordial. It is not the people at Yahoo! I had a problem with. They were all very professional.

Within the next day I was logging in to my Yahoo! Mail account, "now with Beta Interface Freshness." But, all email I have been collecting over the last 4 years was gone. OK. Fine. Must not have been that important, right? Well, it must not have been important to Yahoo!.

As a side note, I proceeded to un-subscribe all the spam this account was receiving. Maybe I could revive this account from corporate spam hell - corporate spam is "legit" spam after all. Right? So once per week, I logged in and un-subscribed to my hearts content. By week four, we were clean and Beta Fresh. I could use this account. I liked the the Beta interface. They did a good job.

Up until last week, all was well. I had a nice secondary account I can use when I, for what ever reason, do not want to use a real email account. (I eventually did retrieve the cryptic password from the cryptic website - now I must commit "r94bd83m" to memory.)

Then - I got a message from Yahoo!, I have not logged in to my Yahoo! account for four months. All my mail has been deleted, again. Considering I have been checking the account once per week, that's unlikely. If I want to revive the mail account, with guarantees that this would not happen again, I can start paying for a Yahoo! Mail Plus account. Other wise "Click Here" to revive the account with no guaranties.

I call Bullshit! Yahoo! I realize that it is a free account, but this is ridiculous.

If you are on Yahoo! Mail and would like a Gmail invite - just send me an email.

Idiots.