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Yahoo charges 11.95 a month for a web hosting starter package. they are about $5-8 more expensive than the average web hosting service (monsterhost got best reviews). but I thought a large company like yahoo would at least provide timely and accurate service.
In the small business support area you would think support for businesses putting their sites on their servers would get timely responses. see my start up days below. once they finally figured out something went wrong during the processing of my package upgrade they told me the escalation process would take 2-3 business days to fix the problem. how much money is that for you? I needed a site fast. so I signed up for a yearly contract of just email and a beginning page. it was lacking any links so I upgraded to the hosting plan to get a real site. well they deleted my starter page immediately and now its over 2 days since I received the web hosting starter package confirmation and active status and I cannot publish a new page because they had a problem processing. they cannot replace the starter page with my company name and email and they cannot get my real site up for a total of 5 days. so now I have no site. it took 5 calls to support personnel who each gave me a different story about the upgrade plan and how long it would take.
Pretty bad business tactics if I say so. so if time = $ for your business don't use yahoo small business services to support your company's site!
Gayle ostic
Time line of service calls :
I purchased a custom email plan to start a business and website. I mistakenly thought I could modify the website once they gave me a starter page. once I realized I could not get a site going I upgraded to a web hosting plan.
1. I called customer service about upgrading and they told me my yearly charge from the custom email would be forfeited once I upgrade. so I hung up.
2. I decided to call again thinking I could get a credit since it was less than 24 hours from the time I purchased the email plan to upgrade. the next support person guaranteed that my next billing cycle would be prorated to reflect the $34.95 I was charged for the yearly service. so at that time I upgraded to web hosting.
3. within minutes I received a confirm email regarding my upgrade and stating I now held a web hosting contract. when I looked again at the starter page I made during the email plan it was gone. I quickly went to work using the sitebuilder tools with the web hosting plan to create a new site. once I finished I could not publish it. so I called customer service for the 3 rd time. the rep told me my account was in pending status and it could take 24 hours for the upgrade to take place. I was angry this was never told to me before. even the confirm email said nothing about how long the status would take before active.in fact, on my login it states active for web hosting.
4. the next day I tried all day to publish and nothing. at the 24 hour period I called again and the first thing the support rep told was this could take 48 hours. I waited 15 minutes on hold to get a manager. I had to leave to pick up my son from school.
5. by 8:30 that evening I called again to try and figure out this bs. that rep went to look up my account status and dug deeper to find out something was very wrong and there was more than just waiting, there was a problem in the processing. he escalated the problem to engineering and came back to say it will take 2-3 business days to rectify. my monthly billing plan stated 6/19 and I would be billed again on 7/19. I said one - this shouldn't take this long you have a serious problem in your support infrastructure to fix this. two I better get my billing date moved tot he 25 th. I am not eating 7 days (5 business) days of a monthly plan with no site. (I have worked for 25 years as a systems engineer for computer h/w and s/w venders I know for a fact that getting these things fixed should not take 2-3 days. for a small business support group that is totally unacceptable.
I switched my company web site and e-mail to Yahoo in Feb 2008 (my prior web hosting merged with somebody), thinking a large company would have great plans and customer service. I did set up the web site easily enough, but it was confusing to set up the business e-mail with their Yahoo acccounts.
Since then they have once suspended my account for nonpayment (no warning, just one e-mail after they already cancelled it saying it was cancelled) sent to the business e-mail account, which THEIR spam-catcher sent to the bulk mail file so I never saw it. Our credit card had been compromised and we had been sent a replacement, but I never thought to change it on the Yahoo account. After many hours on hold, I gave them the proper credit card information, and they said they deleted the old inactive credit card number.
Then a couple of weeks ago the same thing happened. I could not receive any company e-mail, and I spent hours on the phone, on hold, to get the proper credit card information to them, as the online account option would not work. I'm not sure how the old credit card information was still in their system, as it did not show up online in my credit card list.
After it was reactivated, much to my dismay all the e-mail accounts that I had set up had vanished. After another couple of hours on hold, a guy tried to re-enter all the e-mail accounts for me, but did it incorrectly and two did not work. I tried to e-mail technical support with the issue, and they finally corrected it a couple of days later.
Just a few days after this, I get another e-mail saying again my account had been cancelled. I checked the credit card on file online, which was correct. I tried to call several times, and was given a message that they were overwhelmed with calls (no kidding) and to try again later...click...
I tried to go online again to try to send the payment through (which wasn't even due, had just paid it), and kept getting an error message.
After spending a total of probably eight hours of my valuable time on hold and online, I decided to see how another company checked out for web hosting (GoDaddy). I called their billing department, was only on hold for 2 minutes. I called their technical support number, only on hold for one minute. I told them I was testing their response time because I had reached my boiling point with Yahoo, which they found amusing...
So the next day I set up the web site with GoDaddy, was given excellent instructions with a short phone call on how to switch the server name, set up the e-mail, and was totally done in less than 2 hours. I then spent another long hold time with Yahoo, trying to cancel my account, as the online access would not let me remove my credit card information (no surprise), and finally found a recording online telling me how to do it. There was a "comment" section, and believe you me I told them exactly what I thought of their company and their lousy customer service. Frustrating, frustrating, frustrating!
This is very true, I experience REPEATEDLY long hold times. I have NEVER had anyone pick up before a half an hour. I have complained, they say sorry and just go back to having long hold times. When I find a new host, I will drop them.
Ohh yes, 1 more thing! If you don't trust this info to be true, call them your self. Before you get the number from here, try to find a customer support number, that's hard enough... but here it is... [protected] anyone wanna put money down that they will pick up before an hour? he he
Hi There
I joint Yahoo webhosting, paid the subcscription for three months, designed my website then PUBLISHED. What did I see? NOTHING.
If you don't believe me, type in www.tehasa.com in GOOGLE and Yahoo search engine. Both will say same message. "NO matching Data"
I tried to contact Yahoo, I emailed them twice. Until now THERE is NO reply.
Since I paid through PayPal, I am claiming my refund. Yeah and I want my full refund. Or else I will complain to Australian Authority regarding this slack action from Yahoo Staff.
This is more like a robbery to me. They just can take my money and do nothing. They took my payment and they didn't deliver the goods and to me this is clear swindling.
You will know what I meant if you type in www.tehasa, com.
OK I read Yahoo explanation about yahoo site solution, so I published my website through it NOTHING happened either. So you think yahoo website hosting is GOOD? I doubt it!