world of hoagie: 08/01/2006

So if you are a Yahoo! email user, you probably ran into the same problem I have. Your friends put you in their Evites, and you never get it. Then your friend calls you up and asks you why you are ignoring his/her birthday/party/other special occasion. And you would have to explain, you never got the evite and it's not in your spam.

Sound familiar? My friend told me that he noticed this was a common problem among Yahoo! users. (He evites a lot.) So after getting evites into my Gmail accounts, I decided that really, Yahoo! should do a better job. It doesn't even show up in my Spam folder (and yes, I literally checked over a thousand Spams just to verify that it's not in there and some were gross), so apparently, Yahoo! server is somehow filtering out Evites.

I contacted Yahoo! via their help section. This is the response I received (along with my first inquiry below).
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Hello Haeji,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

I appreciate that you contacted us for assistance. I have read your email and would like to help. If you believe a message that has been delivered to your Bulk Mail Folder is more appropriately delivered to your Inbox, please open the message, and click the "Not spam" button.

By sending examples of "spam" and messages you feel are "not spam" to Yahoo! for review, it will increase the effectiveness of SpamGuard, Yahoo! Mail's filtering system. Yahoo! will use the messages you send to constantly improve the SpamGuard technology.

If you demand even greater Spam prevention, check out the Yahoo! Mail Plus service. Yahoo! Mail Plus includes SpamGuard Plus, an enhanced version of Yahoo!'s SpamGuard.

SpamGuard Plus is tailored to each user's individual preference, as you train it on what you consider spam and not spam. You train the filter each time you mark a message as spam or not spam from within your Yahoo! Mail Account.

SpamGuard Plus learns specifically what you consider Spam and Not Spam and filters those messages to the appropriate folder. The more you train the filters by marking messages Spam or Not Spam, the better they will work for you.

While we make our best effort to deliver solicited email directly to your Inbox, we may occasionally send a message which you have requested to your Bulk Mail folder. It is important, therefore, that you check the Bulk Mail Folder from time to time to make sure you do not miss these messages.

If you want to ensure that emails from certain senders will always appear in your Inbox, you may create filters specifically for these senders. Filters automatically sort your incoming messages into the folders of your choice, according to rules that you set up. The benefit
of filters is that you don't need to read through each message to decide where it goes.

For more information on how to set up filters, please visit the "Filters" section at:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/manage/manage-06.html

Regarding your second issue, Thank you for your suggestions regarding Yahoo! Mail. It is through user comments and feedback that we are able to continue to develop and improve our service. We will be forwarding a copy of your message to the Yahoo! Mail team as a product suggestion.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Clarence

Yahoo! Customer Care

Visit our online help pages at:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/

Original Message Follows:
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[my initial inquiry]

hi,
i have been told several times that my friends have sent me evite via my yahoo account but i never receive them!! i get thousands of spam in bulk folder...but when my friends tell me, i check my bulk folder to see if evites land there. often, i don't even see evites in my bulk folder.

i am troubled that (1) legitimate & popular emails such as evites don't even appear to make it through yahoo! server and (2) this is indicative of other emails i may have never gotten! (i have been told by a few folks they sent me email but i never saw them).

because of this, i have told my friends to send all my evite to my gmail account. in my gmail, i get it in my inbox, not my spam folder.

please fix the evite problem & ascertain that all my legitimate emails are coming into my inbox.

i would like to STRONGLY suggest that searching in yahoo email allow searching through bulk folder and trash as well (which gmail now does). organizing bulk mail by date or sender & then trying to find emails that may have been sent on such date is EXTREMELY time consuming. at least, then, even if something lands in my bulk folder (but as i note, i never even got evites in my bulk folder), i can retrive it easily.

best regards,
haeji
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So notice how Yahoo! doesn't address the problem that Evites don't make it through Yahoo! server? I did. So of course, I followed up, rather vehemently. (Yes, I'm persistent). Guess what? Then, I get this response.

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Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Customer Care is committed to answering your questions as quickly and as accurately as possible. We apologize for the delay in responding to this message.

Before proceeding, we'd like to verify your account information so we can confirm your account ownership. We take this precaution to ensure the security of your account.

Please provide all of the following information:

1. Your Yahoo! ID

2. Your zip or postal code AND the verified alternate email address you specified when registering your Yahoo! ID

3. Either the secret question and answer or date of birth you entered when registering your Yahoo! ID

We'll be happy to assist you after matching this info with our records.

Again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this delay may have caused you, and we thank you for your patience. Your satisfaction is always our goal.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Yahoo! Customer Care

Original Message Follows:
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[my follow-up inquiry]

i don't think you understand my problem and have NOT addressed it effectively per your email below.

(1) there are apparently emails that ARE NOT even going to my spam (specifically evite). thus your solution of making it "not spam" CANNOT be applied when i can't even get to the email!
(2) i have hundreds (at least) of contacts. if the only way to make sure that (a) you don't put emails from my friends in spam or (b) that you don't block it in any way because i don't see them in spam folder, is to create separate filters, then you are not doing a good job.

let me reiterate clearly. YOU ARE BLOCKING EMAILS FROM EVEN COMING INTO MY SPAM FOLDER!!!

i don't know what you are doing. i was impressed by yahoo! beta but if THAT'S the reason why some emails are blocked, then i'm not impressed. either fix the problem, or get rid of yahoo! beta until you have done so. i'd rather get emails in any which way then not get them.

please address my concern. AGAIN, MY CONCERN IS THAT CERTAIN EMAILS ARE NOT EVEN GOING INTO MY SPAM! i know that to be true w/evites.
haeji

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I was a tad annoyed by Yahoo!'s response. They never asked for all those information before responding, or not responding correctly, to my initial inquiry. Plus, did you notice how Yahoo! asked for both my Security Question AND Security Answer??? What sense does that make? Yes, being persistent (or cranky/pesky), I followed up, yet again.

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i'm a little concerned by your response. (i assume you have a copy of the response b/c i changed my setting so my reply will not paste what you wrote to me).

first, you didn't need to get all my information before responding to my initial inquiry explaining the problem. it's a little suspicious that you require all kinds of information for a follow-up query, pointing out what my inquiry was. (i have my doubts if you are seriously yahoo! responding to me... or some other phishing site).

second, one of the information you request from me is both secret question AND answer. do you see the flaw in that logic? YOU should have the secret question, and I should have the secret answer. that is the whole point of having that system.

based on (1) the incredible delay in getting back to me, (2) the suspicious nature that you haven't addressed my inquiry but instead ask for a lot of personal information, part of which you should not be asking me but should already have, and (3) that regardless, any identifying nformation is irrelevant to your system-wide problem (i have friends who use yahoo email and have reported similar problems with evites not getting through as spam or regular email), i will not respond back with information that could potentially be falling into identity thieves' hands.

if this really is yahoo!, i'm disappointed by lack of safety measures and illogical responses to my inquiries. i suggest your course of action should be (1) take a random poll of yahoo! email users (b/c most of my friends also report similar problems as i have), (2) figure out why evites aren't getting through, even as spam, and (3) fix the problem. i don't need a personal email from you if you fix it.

i will ask one of my friends to put me in an evite list within the next couple of weeks. if i don't get the evite (like i normally don't), then you haven't fixed the problem.
haeji

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Yes, this is a long post. And you wonder, is there a happy ending? Sadly, there's more and this is the last response I got from Yahoo! .

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Hello Haeji,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

We can certainly understand your concern when providing this information via email. Please rest assured that we do not request account verification information through unsolicited means. We only initiate such requests after we have received a help inquiry regarding your Yahoo! account. We require this account verification process as a security measure to help us confirm your account ownership.

If you did not initiate a help inquiry to us via the Yahoo! Help page or via email, please reply and let us know so that we may close out your help ticket. Otherwise, please provide the information requested in our previous correspondence to you and we will be happy to assist you.

As a standard policy, we will not be able to discuss account related issues or perform technical troubleshooting within your account without proper account verification, nor can we discuss your account with a third party.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Jasmine

Yahoo! Customer Care

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I replied back. It was rather short. Here it is.

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ask me the secret question. then i'll give you my secret answer. i refuse to provide both secret question and answer. that's completely asinine.

haeji

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So what do I hope to achieve after all this? At this point, I don't know. Sometimes, I wonder why I bother giving feedbacks to an obvious problem if such feedbacks will be ignored. And it only makes me crankier to have to follow-up to my feedback. What do I hope to gain by posting this on my blog? Maybe somebody else will bother Yahoo! about this problem too so they will fix it. I'm tired of feeling like I'm the only vocal one about a stupid and obvious problem. Ok. That's enough ranting for me.

So, if you are tuned into the tech news these days, you must have heard that Google bought Writely. It's one of the online, free wordprocessors out there right now. I say one of many, because I know of at least two others (I'm sure there are more). AjaxWrite and Zoho Writer.

I got curious. Do they really compete with Microsoft's Word? Sure the cost is great (can't beat free) but what about the features?

After briefly checking out the interface and creating test documents, I have to say that they are sadly unmatched. And for now, I am going to shell out money to buy Microsoft Word. They have the most limited, basic functions. Meaning you can type, change fonts to bold, italics, various styles of fonts, change justifications, insert graphs, tables, etc. But guess what? Not single one of them has the ability to insert a footnote!!??

In my book, without the footnote function, you can forget about using it (well, as a lawyer, I am pretty biased that the footnote function is an essential, if not basic, wordprocessing feature).

I have to acknowledge, though, that several features that seem better are (1) that these online wordprocessors (except Ajax Write) allows multiple users to change the same document and (2) they can save to different type of documents -- pdf, doc, rtf, etc. I don't think Word allows you to save as pdf in most cases.

Until the features improve, though (footnotes!), I'm probably going to sit by and watch which one ends up winning in the free, online wordprocessing arena.