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Yahoo! mail problems

One of my clients had a problem earlier today. I helped them choose a new email setup, and they went with Yahoo Business Edition Mail. It’s worked like a charm for them until today. Oh, sure, they’ve had to adjust their business processes a bit, but it was a vast improvement over their previous situation, where only allowed one person in to view his or her mailbox at a time. And it’s quite low maintenance and fairly easy to learn, as it was entirely browser based.

But today, the web client for Yahoo! was busted. New layouts, new colors, old functionality gone, intermittent changes in the GUI, the whole bit. I got on the phone with Yahoo! support, and they assured me it was simply a webmail client problem. No mail was being lost. But, as Joel explains, for most folks, the interface is the program. You try explaining the difference between SMTP and POP and mail storage and local clients to an insurance agent who just wants to send her customers an application.

One of the worst bits is that, other than getting on the phone with Yahoo! support, there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix the problem. Alright, this isn’t entirely true–I could have worked on migrating them off the web client, and perhaps off Yahoo! entirely. And, had the outage continued, I probably would have begun that process. But fixing the web client was entirely out of my hands. That’s the joy and the pain of outsourcing, right? The problems aren’t yours to fix (yay!) but you can’t fix the problems yourself (boo!). Also, chances are the outsourcing provider is never going to be more enthusiastic than you about fixing your problems, and might be significantly less.

361 thoughts on “Yahoo! mail problems

  1. heather says:

    even though i already have an account with yahoo i dotn have the desktop icon like i did because my computer is wacked up and i try puting it back on the computer the other day and when i did and i tryed opening it and it said you have proformed an illegal operation this will be closed. do u know what that means? it also said that when i tryed openign my e-mail account with peoplepc. please help i havent been able to talk to my buddys at yahoo or go in chat rooms for about 8 monthes now because of this please write back………..heather:^)

  2. Kalpan says:

    Respected sir/madam, I am a regular visiter and member of yahoo mail and messenger. I would like to inform you that I am unable to access my mail inbox and with that my mails. This problem occured on 1st of february 2005, and its still not allowing me to view inbox and mails. Kindly solve my problem and sent me the solution on gemini_k@rediffmail.com or on my yahoo mail address.

  3. Manmohan Singh says:

    Hi,
    Could you let me know how we’ll resolve the problem related with yahoo mail.
    I am always facing a problem to open inbox in yahoo mail.
    error: ‘yad_width’ is undefined.
    my email address of yahoo is m_dhatwalia@yahoo.com

  4. prasanna says:

    Whenever i’m trying to open any email it is showing error icon in the bottom of the IE , i have to refresh 5 or 6 times to open the page , same time my friends able to open their mails from the same machine , y . my email id : r1_prasan@yahoo.com

  5. Prasanna says:

    Probelm in Page opening : Can anyone help me , the problem is
    Whenever i’m trying to open any email it is showing error icon in the bottom of the IE , i have to refresh 5 or 6 times to open the page , same time my friends able to open their mails from the same machine , y . my email id : r1_prasan@yahoo.com

  6. donna says:

    i can get into my mail,, but when i click onto seeing my inbox mail it won’t come up for me to read, please help me with this i have no clue whats going on with it,,,,, thankyou

  7. chris says:

    i am having proublums with getting in to my messenger and my yahoo mail it says that yahoo deactivated my acount .Why ? how can i get my list of friends? please help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  8. Nancy Barnett says:

    While I can receive and read my e-mails I can not reply nor forward. Additionally, the Compose page in incomplete in that it allows me to address the e-mail and fill-in the subject it does not allow for a written message and it will not send. How do I contact Yahoo by phone?

    Thanks

    Nancy Barnett

  9. Al says:

    OKAY I DON’T KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED, BUT MY YAHOO DECIDED TO CHANGE ITS PASSWORD ON ME…WITHOUT MY PERSMISSION…HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? I EVEN GOT AN EMAIL TO NOTIFY ME! WHAT ON EARTH IS MY PASSWORD NOW?

  10. Dan Moore says:

    Sorry, folks, the spambots have defeated me. Good luck in your quest to find happiness and tech support with Yahoo. This entry’s comments are officially closed.

    I put up the ‘Yahoo Mail Problems’ weblog post over a year ago, and since then it has garnered many comments and a high place in search engine rankings. A few months ago, I turned off comments because it was a spam target.

    I’m sorry that you’re having problems with Yahoo. I’d like to help you, but unfortunately, I’m not affiliated with them in any way, and thus cannot help. Some links that may or may not be useful to you:

    Yahoo Mail tutorial: http://help.yahoo.com/us/tutorials/mail/index.html
    Yahoo Mail help: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/

    Please be aware that I won’t respond to emails on this topic.

  11. david says:

    So let’s see- the problem is we have a mail system that doesn’t function consistently. The proposed solution is to ask customers to pay more money for “business edition” mail. What a bunch of CRAP.
    Either fix the problem or we pull out of AT&T and give our money to somebody who can provide decent service.

Comments are closed.