Saturday, May 19, 2007

Is Yahoo Asleep at the Wheel?

What is going on at Yahoo (YHOO), which trades on NASDAQ? I have a side business online that is listed in one of the Yahoo directories. Last week (May 8, 2007), I received the following email from Yahoo. Pay special attention to the date in the first sentence of the letter.

Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 05:03:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Yahoo! Express
From: bizex-general@yahoo-inc.com Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
CC: bizex-general@yahoo-inc.com

Dear Yahoo! Directory Submit Client:

Your Yahoo! Directory Submit listing expired on

Apr 28 2003

This is your final warning. We have been unable to charge your
credit card the annual fee associated with Yahoo! Directory Submit for
the upcoming year. Unless you provide us with a valid credit
card number immediately, your site will be removed from the
Yahoo! Directory within five days.
By paying the recurring annual fee, you are guaranteed that your site
will be re-reviewed by the editorial team on a yearly basis.


To update your credit card and billing information, please go to the
Listing Management Center:
https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/manage/orders?status=a/.

Your site currently appears in this category:

etc. etc.


At first I thought this was a scam. I did mouseovers on all the links and they all linked back to ebay.com URL's. I then did a reply, asking questions about this letter to confirm it is genuine, and apparently, it is.

It's been four years since they have charged me for this service and now they are finally following up? I could see maybe getting behind by maybe three or four months, although even that would be hard to believe, as I would think that their billing system would be automated. Four years! Four years? No wonder the stock has been suffering.

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