So for a while at least, I’m still stuck at Yahoo for a big majority of my email. That in itself is no big deal, but I have about had it “up to here” with their horrible support.

Every time I submit a support request I get one of two basic responses:
1. Something that’s so totally off-base because they simply are ignoring or don’t understand what I’m telling them.
2. “Use Internet Explorer.”

No, freak, IE is not the answer to all problems.

Anyway, here are my problems with them as of lately.

Ads on my DSL Start Page

As a paid user (because ATT/SBC is my ISP), I don’t have any ads in my email. However, a new development has been an ad on my start page. I like this start page with the news, easy access to weather, my email, etc. Also, I’m just plain used to it. Sorry if that offends you. Anyway, recently they’ve added an ad, a single ad, at the top of the right-hand column of modules. This is the only layout I use so I don’t know what other ads there might be for someone else.

I emailed help after this had annoyed me for a couple of weeks and complained that I am a paid user, so why am I seeing these ads? Their response? Basically: “sorry, but there’s no way to remove those ads.” And by “those ads,” they weren’t even referring to the homepage, but somewhere else (I forget where). I had to reply that “you just don’t get it, do you?” but have had no response to that as of yet. I even sent them a link to the following screenshot (click for full):

…Only… when I sent them the screenshot, I sent one with a HUGE red arrow pointing at the ad. Isn’t that ad annoying? I am a paid user, I should not have to look at that blinking ad.

Yes, I have Adblock installed for FireFox. Maybe someone can clue me in on how to block the Flash ads, because when I right click on them, all I get are Flash options. If an actual image one comes up, though, I can right click on it and block iframe. So at least now, after weeks of looking at this stupid thing, I miss some of them.

I even ran across a Yahoo survey asking me about the ads not too long ago. It was some HUGE nearly full page ad and they wanted to know what I thought, and such. I had the wonderful pleasure of telling them that it sucked and that I couldn’t view it anyway, since Adblock got it first. :P

Email Beta Problems

My second problem has to do with the email beta. I want to use this, I really do. I want to like this. But they’re making it so hard for me.

It was working for a little while when suddenly it started appearing funny. So funny that I can’t perform basic functions. Here’s what it looks like:

This is what it’s supposed to look like and how it does display, just before the inbox loads:

Once the inbox loads, forget it, it appears like in the first image. To switch back, I have to quickly click on the switch back link before the inbox loads.

So I make my way to the Yahoo help section and email them. The response I get the next day? I got one of the most frustrating responses ever, they told me the problem was with SBC and so I needed to talk to them.

What!?

How is the Yahoo interface a SBC problem? It’s the same Beta interface for both sbcglobal addresses as well as Yahoo ones! I replied back and told them exactly what I thought of them and then for good measure went ahead and asked for help from SBC on the issue, explaining that I know it’s a Yahoo issue but that they told me to go to SBC. So we’ll see where this goes.

Finally…

(I had another issue but for the life of me I can’t remember it now…)

Do you see what I mean? Yahoo support just does not listen to the users problems. This has been going on for years. When I had an issue that the FireFox extension for Yahoo Photos had suddenly stopped working, twice they told me to use Internet Explorer. I had to say, then, why in the heck does your FAQ provide instructions for FireFox if it, as according to you, is not supported/compatible? I distinctly remember writing about that, but for the life of me I can’t find the entry, it was several years ago anyway, BF (Before Flickr).

Finally, check out this help Q & A. It’s ridiculous. The problem is that a setting in the beta mail is not changeable and/or savable, their solution? “Duh, uh, this is usually caused by the Skpe Toolbar extension for FireFox. Duh, uh, you should uninstall that extension.” Morons!! LOL

This compares highly to the FAQ item I came across on Roxio’s website where a user with such-and-such problem was told to uninstall IE 7 and go back to IE 6.

What is with these developers that they can’t make their products compatible with others so they tell the user point blank to get rid of the “offending” program instead of trying to fix the issue?

Mmm, I keep smelling glazed donuts, who has donuts?

Yes, we should all cheer because I just deleted 1431 emails that I have sent in the last year.

And the villagers rejoice.

Occassionally when forwarding an email I’ve gotten a captcha screen where I have to input the correct letters and numbers or my email will not be sent. It might happen when sending from my sbcglobal account (main account for SBC/Yahoo DSL) or it might happen with domain emails. While it’s always been annoying, it’s never been a problem before.

Of course, it’s also perplexing. Why must I have to do this? I’ve had a good standing sbclgobal account for over a year as a DSL customer and before that I used Yahoo email for at least six or seven years… seriously. So, I, obviously not a new account, have to enter a captcha? Why?!

Well, today, I wrote a decent sized email in reply to one from Anita that was sent to my sbcglobal account. I was replying. Not forwarding. Not even starting a new email.

I wrote the email, sent it and got the captcha screen. I entered the letters and numbers as were shown…

…and then was told that I was incorrect, that my email had not been sent… OR saved. I lost it all.

I sent Yahoo a nasty letter.

Then I had to go back and try to remember everything I’d written to Anita. Guess what? I got hit by the captcha again!!

This time there were more letters and this time I passed. Thankfully. Okay, so for some reason my email kept flagging them, but even besides the whole thing of me having to do the captcha in the first place after being a good customer for this long, why does it not save my email to drafts or give me another try or something? That is just daft.

So you, any of you have this problem ever? This SO makes me want to just stop supporting them I’m so ticked off.

Fujifilm
Looks like I’m going to be without my digital camera for about four weeks. Not long ago my camera started shutting itself off for no reason and it’s getting worse. It might happen right after I turn it on or right before I take a picture, or right after I take a picture, or right after I press the button to review pictures, or in today’s case: about 30 times while trying to get it to discharge the batteries. I have taken good care of the batteries and the camera itself, I don’t get it.
So I finally called Fujifilm today (they’ve ignored two emails from me to their tech support department), and all they will tell me is their address – I waited on hold for 25 minutes to get their stupid address to where I am supposed to send in my camera for them to look at it and hopefully fix it. To me, this is just a stupid solution, but I guess it’s really the only thing that can be done, as they have no repair locations in Missouri, but it pisses me off nonetheless.
This means that for the next three or four weeks I have to either use the cell phone only or the 35mm… which means I have to go buy film. I won’t be able to take many or decent photos at the five fairs we have coming up now. If it doesn’t come back to me fixed by my friend’s wedding on November 26, I’m really going to be angry… *sigh*

Yahoo
What else is new? I am sick and tired of the stupid Javascript errors that keep popping up in my email and keep me from reading some messages, deleting any messages, moving any messages, etc. And we all know that their tech support is run by people who don’t actually read the emails they get, so, I’m stuck here. I am really considering moving to Gmail for all my mail but I don’t want to because there are still some limitations there for external addresses (doesn’t reply from that address, changes to default, for one).

Nickelodeon Jr.
Last night I had to go in Walmart with my family to show them how to get prints of the lovely pictures I took of my sister from my memory card. Elijah started freaking out and after a few minutes I realized why. He could see the VHS rack with Dora the Explorer tapes on it. So, yeah, we ended up buying one. Some Cowgirl Dora or something. He held that thing all the way home, I was surprised he stayed awake, we got home at nearly 11pm.
Now the reason Nick Jr ticked me off today – this is a tape for a preschooler and/or young child, right? Then why the heck is there ten minutes of previews on there!? Elijah freaked out as I fast forwarded through them, he wanted Dora NOW. Why can’t they put previews on after the feature? Please?

Windows XP
I really hate that the “new folder” button is right next to the “go up one level” button…

Spammers
They are constantly crawling my site… even as I speak. I just deleted 118 spam comments and that doesn’t count the emails from OSA that it has deleted over a hundred just since yesterday afternoon. Each day I have more to delete. Well, at least they’re not getting on the blog, but still. I had to turn off the “email me when there’s a comment to moderate” feature because it was just overloading me. So if any person gets a moderated comment, they’re out of luck, because they’re all getting marked as spam, I don’t have time to go through all those comments and see what’s not spam and what is, not when 99.9% of them will be spam for sure…

Husbands
And finally I am angry at Steve because he refuses to buy me a dishwasher. Excuse me while I go wash some dishes…

(Okay so that sounded worse than I meant it, I’m not really mad at him. We don’t have room for a dishwasher. But I still wish I had one…)