Posted on: 2004/06/13 08:49am
By: Anonymous (scottdeaver)
Here's a challenge - as a paid member, try to find a human contact number or address on the Yahoo! Personals website. Yes, it is there, but buried deeply in an unexpected area, and sorry, no toll-free number - you must pay long distance (even while you wait for what seems like hours) and only get a human respondent during a small subset of business hours on California time. Both Yahoo! personals and Match.com are the poster children for "accountability cowardice" - up front and in your face when there's a chance to exploit someone lonely and or desperate for profits, but harder to run down than *censored*roaches in the dark when trying to get customer service. A real world example: I've lost a full month of my paid one-year subscription to Yahoo! Personals merely because I had the line "Now there's something I'll bet you didn't expect to find on this Yahoo Personals site!" in my ad. My ad consisted of two full paragraphs and five photos, and the cowardice started immediately - three days after submitting the ad, I received a generic rejection containing words to the effect that "There's something wrong with your ad or photos, and we can't accept it - please correct the problem and re-submit your ad". That's it - no indication what the "problem" was, no contact person, no return email, no other information whatsoever...so, no ad posted, but they HAD charged my credit card, of course! So, over the next few weeks, I changed my ad wording, photos, even my profile selections (none of which were even mildly objectionable) trying to get acceptance, without luck. So finally, totally frustrated and still no posted ad (but out the $70 nonetheless), I searched through the entire site and found some contact information buried on their site (in the advertising section - all "company info" links are currently broken, and have been for over a year and a half - the number I used is shown below. Ultimately, after going two levels up the supervisory chain, I learned that the filtering process used works like this: they hire minimum-wage Latinos and blacks (the only ones who will work for the wages they pay) and provide them software that automatically parses ad content for anything unacceptable (sadly, the list of "unacceptable" things the software rejects is nothing like the list they publish on the pages of their web site, as you'll see in a moment). The employees are free to apply their ignorance, weak English-speaking skills, prejudices, attitudes (some even think "rap" is music, poor souls) and cultural slants at will to rejecting ads - there is no oversight or accountability up stream. $23 dollars worth of long distance charges later, we (the supervisor had no more clue than I did about what was happening with my ad) finally discovered why my ad had been rejected 17 times without explanation - one of the "unacceptable" items on the filtering software's list is to mention any dating service by name, even Yahoo! Personals!!! So that one line - "Now there's something I'll bet you didn't expect to find on this Yahoo Personals site!" - cost me a month's service. Did the supervisor offer to refund or credit the month, or the cost of the phone call (or my time, for that matter)? Of course not - "I'm sorry, I understand how you feel, but they don't provide us any way to do that - you'll have to talk to someone in accounting" - as thought "accounting" was some other company somewhere off in the distance rather than three cubicles down the hall...she didn't even offer to transfer the call. She did, however, finally approve my ad as originally written, but she acted as though she was doing me some kind of huge favor (she had that perversely ghetto-black attitude where anyone white owes her something merely because she dragged her sorry butt out of bed in the morning - doing anything more to actually EARN her pay would be too "Uncle Tom").
If you're going to use Yahoo! Personals to enhance your romantic possibilities, be prepared to deal with a very impersonal, money-grubbing, unprofessional organization with terrible software and products whose interest in you is limited only to the bulge in your pants (your wallet).
(408) 349-1572 (customer service)
(617) 305-6032 (advertising sales)
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/ (link is currently broken)
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/more/?http://docs.yahoo.com/info/ (link is currently broken)
http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTB1M2EzYWFoBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEdGVzdAMwBHRtcGwDaWUtYmV0YQ--/r/cp (link is currently broken)
Customer care at Yahoo! Personals
Posted on: 2004/06/13 08:53am
By: Anonymous (scottdeaver)
Wow, this site's filtering software is nearly as moronic as Yahoo! Personals...did you see that the word "c o c k r o a c h e s" was censored because of the "c o c k"???
Customer care at Yahoo! Personals
Posted on: 2004/06/13 02:30pm
By: Anonymous (horselady)
Hah! Try working for a company (which provides unlimited web access) which sees access to lensexpress as patronizing a porn site!
Customer care at Yahoo! Personals
Posted on: 2004/06/13 03:39pm
By: Anonymous (UncleTom)
Gee Scott, couldn't have happened to a nicer uptight, beer guzzling, trailer park trash, bigot. Why do you need Yahoo personals anyway? Just go outside, in the kitchen, or wherever you keep the family pig or goat and boink the hell out of it if you can't wait for your hillbilly pappy to put down the banjo and free up your little sister to bang.
Customer care at Yahoo! Personals
Posted on: 2004/09/20 01:07pm
By: Anonymous (Oh Really?)
Well scottdeaver, your experience with Yahoo!Personals sounds frustrating but you clearly have several issues with cultures that differ from your own. Was it necessary to portray the employees of the company as undereducated/stupid due to your socioeconomic preconceived notions convey your point or are you as bigoted as you appear to be? You may have actually had a point worth considering and warning others about until your discourse degraded into a personal attack on the basis of race.