Yahoo Store Sucks

Let me start off by saying that I love the idea of the Yahoo store. In recent months I have recommended it to dozens of people, and the largest of these sites have thousands of dollars of sales each month. The interface is fairly complete, the system is decently customizable, and the benefits of the Yahoo Shopping network are easy to see. However Yahoo is plagued with a fundamental problem that many companies face… Horrible customer service.
I have spent the last three weeks trying to give Yahoo money. See the problem here? Companies should make it as easy as possible for their customer to give them money. I’ve been emailing, I have been calling, and alas I still cannot give the company money. When your customer service escalation process is “I will escalate your case to a supervisor by sending them an email, and they will get back to you in two to seven weeks” you know there is a serious problem. As soon as a customer says, here is my credit card number, please bill it, that customer should be taken care of on the phone, immediately.
This reminds me of something that I noticed with AOL a few years ago. 25% of people that I knew with AOL accounts were not being billed. They had signed up for AOL using the provided CD, entered all of their credit card information, and after a year of service had never been billed. So lets do some math, lets say at the time AOL had around 20 million users. That would mean that there were another 6 million not being charged by the system, times $19.99 a month, times 12 months for a year, equals $1.4 Billion in annual revenue lost.
Yes that’s right $1.4 Billion in lost income. Think about that for a second. I wonder how many people are trying to give Yahoo money right now? Something tells me I am not the only one.
Makes you wonder doesn’t it?