Online booking - Yahoo shows me a major pitfall
 

As noted in yesterday's FFR&R thread, Yahoo is driving me buggy. For a full week I've been trying to get actual help from their Customer Care people because one of the folders in my mailbox won't open -- and it's the one in which I filed all email concerning travel, such as hotel confirmations and e-tickets.

Fortunately, I always print out these things before I file them. BUT aside from the inconvenience and the loss of records I'm concerned about some sort of security breach here. It's the ONLY folder (among about a dozen) with this problem. In general, I try to practice "safe internet," but for travel especially, you're pretty much forced to use the net for such transactions.

Would appreciate 1.)advice on how to get to an actual, responsive human being at Yahoo (all roads seem to lead to the same fill-in-the-blank Customer Care form, which ALWAYS results in an autoresponse, saying "if the problem persists, click here" -- and clicking there either results in nothing or another autoresponse); 2.) ideas about whether I have any reason to worry about security -- as best I can recall, not one of those emails had a complete credit card number (just XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-5555 or some such), but still.... ; and 3.) your own experience.

Probably should post this on US board, too, I guess, since it's a US service and more people are likely to be using it. So apologies for duplication.

Have you tried calling their customer service number? I have found them to be very helpful in the past. They are able (and I found this pretty scary) to access your email account without you giving them your password. Perhaps they can also access your folders there and fix whatever's wrong.

Cassandra,

I don't have any suggestions for you, but just wanted to sympathize. A few months ago, my Yahoo email just stopped working, or it would only work sporadically. When I tried to log in, I would be thrown into an endless loop. Then occasionally, I could get in the mailbox, but I could not send or reply to messages -- the same loop problem.

I know it was something wrong with one of their servers, because I created another Yahoo account and it did not have the same problems. I also replicated the problem on several different computers, both Mac and Windows. But when I sent in those "customer care" forms, I would always get only autoresponses, or canned instructions for clearing cookies, etc., which didn't work.

Finally after about 6 weeks, with no explanations, the mailbox started working again. I am quite sure that there was something wrong with that server, which they eventually figured out, but they would not admit it of course. In the meantime I had opened a Gmail account, and actually like it better than Yahoo.

One thing I always do now, too, is to print all my receipt forms from the browser to pdf files, which I store on my own computer. That makes it easy to print new copies. I'm not sure whether Windows does this, but it is an option on a Mac, which I use.

P.S. One thing I shoud add -- the only suggestion I can offer is to keep on filling out those customer "care" forms every day. I don't know if that actually helped, or if it was just chance, but I did keep on sending them in and eventually my problem got fixed.

Cassandra - your Cardholder Agreement protects you against fraudulent use of your credit card. The card issuers exhort you to protect your number because <u>they</u> are liable for misuse of the card (if they can't hang it on the merchant).

Don't worry about it.

I have never had this problem with Yahoo,but I have thought about what I would do if I was ever unable to access my Yahoo account
So now I have opened up a Gmail account as my primary email client and have all incoming emails automatically forwarded to my Yahoo account.
This way I have a backup on two different servers in case there is a problem with either one of them.

Definitely call Yahoo directly and as to talk to Customer Care. You will get results.

OK -- I'm probably being blind and stoopud, but where is the phone number for &quot;customer care&quot;? The only phone number I've found anywhere (which I intend to use on Monday) is the &quot;Media Contact&quot; number.

BTW Robespierre -- I'm not particularly worried about unauthorized people using credit cards, although it's a PITA when that happens and you have to go through closing old accounts and opening new ones. A tad more worried about someone gaining access to information that could assist in identity theft -- mainly, why would THAT folder and no other be the one frozen?

Cassandra, try this method. I don't know if it will work. Do an advanced search on a term that you know will show up in that folder. All emails that match show up in a list. Perhaps you can access them that way.

&quot;I'm not particularly worried about unauthorized people using credit cards...&quot;

<b>&quot;2.) ideas about whether I have any reason to worry about security -- as best I can recall, not one of those emails had a complete credit card number (just XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-5555 or some such), but still....&quot;</b>

Don't answer. Thanks.

I have a Yahoo free email account and have never had any major problems with it. I think I did experience what you are -- not being able to access my email box once -- but it was very temporary, so I figured it was just a termporary server problem which happens on any service. I don't think it lasted longer than a day or two.

You don't say if you have a paid mail account or not -- I don't think they want to take a lot of phone calls for free services, but don't know if they give out different phone numbers if you pay. I only have a free account so would never use it as my sole repository of anything important.

Maybe someone else can tell you the customer care phone number they used, but this is the phone number on their website for just their main offices in Sunnyvale:

408) 349-3300

Have you tried going into the folders through the mail tab? Click on the tab and go to folders. If you have more than one, they will all be listed and see if you can access it from there.

I've had Yahoo free email for years and have SBC Yahoo as well and have never had a problem. I don't know who you would contact via telephone for help for the free email but if you have SBC Yahoo call your phone company. From there you can select the options that will take you to a service rep.

Update: Someone at Yahoo was up at 2 am this morning and responded -- strange are the ways.....

The problem, which had not been a problem until apparently recently, was that I had a period in the name of the folder, and renaming it without the period took care of it. I usually know better than to have any &quot;unauthorized character&quot; ( ;-) ) in a file name, but this had worked for more than a year, so I had no reason to think it was the problem.

Thanks to all sympathetic souls who made an effort to help. (Missed your point, Robespierre, but since you don't want an answer.....).