A Customer-(non)Care approach by Yahoo!

Update:August 31, 2014

I did contact the Yahoo! Customer Care via Twitter - and they told me my account was restored a couple of days ago ... but nobody told me - very strange indeed.

At least, I got everything back !

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Yahoo! abusively decided to remove my mail account without any prior notice – 20 years of mails, contacts, … lost in a second !

On August 14, I suddenly could not access my Yahoo! Account, account I’m using for about 20 years …

Take the time to imagine: those numerous mails with family and friends, the conversations with your future girl/boy-friend, the official mails you’ve sent for this trial after your accident, all those contacts you have in mails you never saved apart, all the mailing lists that send you mails to that address, all those sites that have that mail address to recover your password, … all that just gone!

I tried several times to contact the so-called Customer-Care department (in the US and in France as there is none in Belgium) – this is an extract of the answers I got:

  • The Yahoo account you're inquiring about (*******) has been set for deletion and, unfortunately, can no longer be reactivated. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
    You are welcome to sign up again for a new Yahoo account with a variation of the original ID.
  • Your "*******" Yahoo account was disabled for violation of the Yahoo Terms (TOS).
    When you created your account, you agreed to follow the Yahoo Terms.
    The "Termination" section of the Yahoo Terms outlines the conditions that can cause an account to be disabled/removed.
  • There is nothing that we can do regarding the ******* account.
  • Stop emailing us. You're not getting this account back
  • You can contact legal below for further inquirers
  • Yahoo peut, à bon escient, et à sa seule discrétion, supprimer et/ou résilier les comptes des utilisateurs qui seraient en infraction avec nos Conditions générales.
    Yahoo may wisely, in its sole discretion, delete and / or terminate the accounts of users that would be in violation of our Terms of Services
  • Toute mesure prise à l’encontre d’un utilisateur est confidentielle. Nous ne divulguerons pas ces informations sauf par obligation légale ou dans des cas similaires
    Any action against a user is confidential. We will not disclose this information except as required by law or in similar cases.

In a nutshell, my account has been removed for violation of the Terms of Services, but I may not know how I did – supposedly – violate those TOS as it is confidential ! I have always been using that account very wisely and I am not aware how I would have violated T&Cs …

I also wrote a letter to the Legal Department in the states, without any reaction of any kind.

Conclusion, Yahoo! may abusively destroy a part of your life, without any explanation … and there is nothing you can do about it !

Any comment / Suggestion welcomed!

Benoit De Borggraef

Civil Engineer - Business & Functional Analyst - Solutions Architect

10 年

Good for you. Happy to hear it ends well.

Sheldon Magida

Service Delivery Manager at CoffeeTree Group - IT Advisory and Transformation

10 年

I've noticed a trend over the years that many companies are totally non-responsive to issues unless you make the matter public on social media. This seems to spark some action. This also teaches the important lesson of back ups! My gmail account syncs with my Outlook. That in turn is backed up to my in home cloud drive.

Michel J. Vanden Bossche

Versatile Interim Executive ? Transformation Catalyst ? Strong Focus on People ? Solid ICT Background

10 年

Update: I did contact the Yahoo! Customer Care via Twitter - and they told me my account was restored a couple of days ago ... but nobody told me - very strange indeed. At least, I got everything back !

Michael Wolf

Operations manager | Customer Service | Process improvement | Project Management | Planning | multilingual

10 年

Linkedin has the same approach: I've been put on moderation since a week, but I'm not entitled to know about the what, where and when. It became totally bizarre when Linkedin CS told me (after me pushing them) that they don't know themselves as the decision is taken by the system...so, it's a blackbox operation.

回复

Hi, Michel. Sorry to hear about your loss. I don't use free email accounts for for my main email since everything is stacked in their favor. Even though I rely upon a paid email account, all my email is actually stored on my devices using Outlook desktop running with Dropbox. And I still need to backup onto web service. It's a complicated world to save what's important.

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