3
2005-06-25
Run Don't Walk from Yahoo Small Business
Summary: Yahoo! accidently deleted an entire web hosting service for my father-in-law's business. No warning, no cause, no e-mail to any of the addresses of the account holder (me) or any of the service administrators. On Friday morning, the account was closed for "other reason" by a program. Several people at Yahoo Billing could not tell me why the account was unilaterally closed. But the business got no e-mail or web hosting for a full business day, and no assurance was made that the web files (of any date) could be recovered or the e-mail accounts restored. The full horror story is below.
--------------
Over the last four years, I've helped my father-in-law's business get e-mail for its employees and create a web site where clients could upload and exchange files with their main office. Last winter, I migrated their business to a Yahoo Small Business account, the Web Hosting Standard package. I was off to develop my web business and thought big web-savvy Yahoo would be a safe choice for the employee that was taking over web/e-mail management. After all, my father-in-law's business is fairly low tech; they only need less than a dozen e-mail accounts and some space for small, relatively low bandwidth web pages. I thought Yahoo e-mail seemed reliable and the web hosting wasn't rocket science. Today I understand what a big mistake I made moving the business off my small dedicated server to Yahoo's "proven" business service.
On Yahoo's Small Business page, they have several bullet points for "reliability and security":
Given the above, I was shocked to hear that (1) Yahoo unilaterally, without warning, closed our business hosting account, and (2) after they agreed it was a mistaken closure, they were unable to guarantee recovery of any files or e-mail accounts. They did suggest I immediately re-sign up for a web hosting account, using the same business domain name. They said the files might be there, but after an account gets closed, the files might get deleted. (It sounded like they had periodic disk reclaiming for closed accounts.) When I asked the billing supervisor how something like this could happen, he said "I don't know what to tell you... I don't see any reason for this."
But to get a full appreciation for the horror story that is Yahoo business web hosting, let me give a timeline of events.
5:30 pm. I'm notified that e-mail seems to be down for the business. I login to Yahoo and immediately notice that the entire web hosting service is gone. I see my Yahoo Plus e-mail account and my Personal Address service, but the spot where the business service used to be is gone. I check the billing invoices page. The current month is paid for. There's no record of any cancellation anywhere. The web hosting service is just missing.
I start navigating all over the help pages and my various account pages to find a contact number. Yahoo, with each acquisition and duct taping together of services, seems to get more kludgy over time. As I move from one place to another, I'm asked to login repeatedly. Sometimes a captcha (a graphical anti-robot check) appears and I have to get around it. I make the mistaking of going to the Help area in Yahoo Small Business. There's nothing there for my issue and there doesn't seem to be either e-mail or phone numbers. Why isn't there a Contact Us link in the help area? I go to the Small Business home page and the toll-free number is listed there. Yes!
First stop, after a fifteen minute wait on the phone queue, is technical support. I go through all the personal checks (zip code, contact e-mail, personal question check) and explain the situation to Joe, the tech support guy. He can't find the account. "This is something you'll have to go to Billing about." He can see that we paid for the month, but apparently technical support can't do anything about an accidental service closure. It's not like it's suspended. The account is gone. Missing. I'm worried about being shoved off to Billing. I've been through this kind of back-and-forth with Verizon, yet another big company whose left hand miscommunicates and doesn't know what its right hand is doing. Joe checks out some things with his supervisor. Five to ten minutes later he confirms there's nothing "from a technical standpoint we can do." He gives me the toll-free number, case ID for this tech call, and transfers me to Billing.
6:35 pm. I have a twenty minute wait for Billing while Yahoo softly intones in my ear how I should use billing.yahoo.com rather than wait. I stick to my guns. Soon Mike is on the line. I go through all the personal checks more quickly this time (zip code, contact e-mail, yadda yadda). Mike tells me that our service was closed that morning. He reads the label on the transaction: "Close Other Reason." I'm a little upset with this news, asking how our service could be terminated with no cause. He helpfully tells me to re-sign up. "I have to go through the entire procedure again?" I ask. "What about all the files and e-mail accounts?" Mike makes the mistake of suggesting they're gone. I ask to speak to his supervisor. After a few more minutes of being on hold, he returns with a reference ID for our conversation and places me on hold.
7:02 pm. I think I'm going to speak to the supervisor and give him some righteous nerd indignation, but Yahoo is a little too smart for me. I'm on hold for thirty minutes. The suggestion to visit billing.yahoo.com is gone. Instead, I'm entertained by low volume muzak and a woman who repeats every thirty seconds "All agents are busy at this time. Please continue to hold." This is like acoustic Chinese Water Torture. Drip. Drip.
7:31 pm. Lee, the supervisor picks up and apologizes. He's apparently the only supervisor there. We go through the personal checks again, but this time I simply give him all the answers without the questions. I let him know what's been happening. I want to know how we can get the files and e-mail accounts back. He says "I don't know what to tell you" a lot as we review the situation. I ask him how this can happen, and isn't there some note of who closed it and why? He says a program closed our business service, not a person. He says, "I don't see any reason for this." He says if I reactivate my account soon there's the possibility that the files are still there. There's no assurance given that they can be recovered. There's no mention of a backup, even an old backup. Our service was closed, not suspended. He offers me a free month and sounds genuinely sorry. I record yet another record number for our conversation and prepare to redo the initial sign-up. I ask Lee if I'll be billed the set-up fee again, and he says I will but I can ask for a refund through e-mail to customer support.
7:55 pm. I begin to sign-up again using the old domain name but simultaneously call technical support just to make sure that this is the best way of salvaging the files and e-mail accounts. Patrice verifies that this is the way. Apparently backups aren't available because she's not sure if reactivating the account will bring back the files.
8:10 pm. The web files are still there. I'm FTPing all the web files to my local machine. I've got a copy of the web files from a month ago, but I'm not sure if the company has uploaded unique documents or changed files on the server. The e-mail accounts are all gone. I establish a catchall account for redirection of straggling e-mails, because Yahoo's e-mail system prevents me from reestablishing accounts to personal Yahoo mailboxes without the employees answering invitations. Another call to technical support and John verifies that the e-mail accounts are gone for good.
8:50 pm. I vow to move my father-in-law's business off Yahoo. If this kind of closure can happen arbitrarily, with no e-mail notice and no ready rollback, then Yahoo Small Business service is anything but a service for business. Mea culpa.
The horror. The horror.
Update July 15, 2005: After several weeks, Yahoo's internal investigation yielded a collective shrug. But they helpfully suggested I can reopen my account with them and they'll even give me a free month ($19.95)!
Keywords: Yahoo web hosting problems service closed arbitrary accidental unreliable
--------------
Over the last four years, I've helped my father-in-law's business get e-mail for its employees and create a web site where clients could upload and exchange files with their main office. Last winter, I migrated their business to a Yahoo Small Business account, the Web Hosting Standard package. I was off to develop my web business and thought big web-savvy Yahoo would be a safe choice for the employee that was taking over web/e-mail management. After all, my father-in-law's business is fairly low tech; they only need less than a dozen e-mail accounts and some space for small, relatively low bandwidth web pages. I thought Yahoo e-mail seemed reliable and the web hosting wasn't rocket science. Today I understand what a big mistake I made moving the business off my small dedicated server to Yahoo's "proven" business service.
On Yahoo's Small Business page, they have several bullet points for "reliability and security":
- Yahoo! Web Hosting has been a leader in the field for more than four years
- Yahoo! Web Hosting monitors its systems 24 hours a day and devotes significant resources to maintaining highly reliable facilities for hosting your web site
- Protect your data with snapshot backup and restore capabilities
Given the above, I was shocked to hear that (1) Yahoo unilaterally, without warning, closed our business hosting account, and (2) after they agreed it was a mistaken closure, they were unable to guarantee recovery of any files or e-mail accounts. They did suggest I immediately re-sign up for a web hosting account, using the same business domain name. They said the files might be there, but after an account gets closed, the files might get deleted. (It sounded like they had periodic disk reclaiming for closed accounts.) When I asked the billing supervisor how something like this could happen, he said "I don't know what to tell you... I don't see any reason for this."
But to get a full appreciation for the horror story that is Yahoo business web hosting, let me give a timeline of events.
5:30 pm. I'm notified that e-mail seems to be down for the business. I login to Yahoo and immediately notice that the entire web hosting service is gone. I see my Yahoo Plus e-mail account and my Personal Address service, but the spot where the business service used to be is gone. I check the billing invoices page. The current month is paid for. There's no record of any cancellation anywhere. The web hosting service is just missing.
I start navigating all over the help pages and my various account pages to find a contact number. Yahoo, with each acquisition and duct taping together of services, seems to get more kludgy over time. As I move from one place to another, I'm asked to login repeatedly. Sometimes a captcha (a graphical anti-robot check) appears and I have to get around it. I make the mistaking of going to the Help area in Yahoo Small Business. There's nothing there for my issue and there doesn't seem to be either e-mail or phone numbers. Why isn't there a Contact Us link in the help area? I go to the Small Business home page and the toll-free number is listed there. Yes!
First stop, after a fifteen minute wait on the phone queue, is technical support. I go through all the personal checks (zip code, contact e-mail, personal question check) and explain the situation to Joe, the tech support guy. He can't find the account. "This is something you'll have to go to Billing about." He can see that we paid for the month, but apparently technical support can't do anything about an accidental service closure. It's not like it's suspended. The account is gone. Missing. I'm worried about being shoved off to Billing. I've been through this kind of back-and-forth with Verizon, yet another big company whose left hand miscommunicates and doesn't know what its right hand is doing. Joe checks out some things with his supervisor. Five to ten minutes later he confirms there's nothing "from a technical standpoint we can do." He gives me the toll-free number, case ID for this tech call, and transfers me to Billing.
6:35 pm. I have a twenty minute wait for Billing while Yahoo softly intones in my ear how I should use billing.yahoo.com rather than wait. I stick to my guns. Soon Mike is on the line. I go through all the personal checks more quickly this time (zip code, contact e-mail, yadda yadda). Mike tells me that our service was closed that morning. He reads the label on the transaction: "Close Other Reason." I'm a little upset with this news, asking how our service could be terminated with no cause. He helpfully tells me to re-sign up. "I have to go through the entire procedure again?" I ask. "What about all the files and e-mail accounts?" Mike makes the mistake of suggesting they're gone. I ask to speak to his supervisor. After a few more minutes of being on hold, he returns with a reference ID for our conversation and places me on hold.
7:02 pm. I think I'm going to speak to the supervisor and give him some righteous nerd indignation, but Yahoo is a little too smart for me. I'm on hold for thirty minutes. The suggestion to visit billing.yahoo.com is gone. Instead, I'm entertained by low volume muzak and a woman who repeats every thirty seconds "All agents are busy at this time. Please continue to hold." This is like acoustic Chinese Water Torture. Drip. Drip.
7:31 pm. Lee, the supervisor picks up and apologizes. He's apparently the only supervisor there. We go through the personal checks again, but this time I simply give him all the answers without the questions. I let him know what's been happening. I want to know how we can get the files and e-mail accounts back. He says "I don't know what to tell you" a lot as we review the situation. I ask him how this can happen, and isn't there some note of who closed it and why? He says a program closed our business service, not a person. He says, "I don't see any reason for this." He says if I reactivate my account soon there's the possibility that the files are still there. There's no assurance given that they can be recovered. There's no mention of a backup, even an old backup. Our service was closed, not suspended. He offers me a free month and sounds genuinely sorry. I record yet another record number for our conversation and prepare to redo the initial sign-up. I ask Lee if I'll be billed the set-up fee again, and he says I will but I can ask for a refund through e-mail to customer support.
7:55 pm. I begin to sign-up again using the old domain name but simultaneously call technical support just to make sure that this is the best way of salvaging the files and e-mail accounts. Patrice verifies that this is the way. Apparently backups aren't available because she's not sure if reactivating the account will bring back the files.
8:10 pm. The web files are still there. I'm FTPing all the web files to my local machine. I've got a copy of the web files from a month ago, but I'm not sure if the company has uploaded unique documents or changed files on the server. The e-mail accounts are all gone. I establish a catchall account for redirection of straggling e-mails, because Yahoo's e-mail system prevents me from reestablishing accounts to personal Yahoo mailboxes without the employees answering invitations. Another call to technical support and John verifies that the e-mail accounts are gone for good.
8:50 pm. I vow to move my father-in-law's business off Yahoo. If this kind of closure can happen arbitrarily, with no e-mail notice and no ready rollback, then Yahoo Small Business service is anything but a service for business. Mea culpa.
The horror. The horror.
Update July 15, 2005: After several weeks, Yahoo's internal investigation yielded a collective shrug. But they helpfully suggested I can reopen my account with them and they'll even give me a free month ($19.95)!
Keywords: Yahoo web hosting problems service closed arbitrary accidental unreliable
Comments are closed
3 Comments