Why Yahoo will fail

I use Yahoo Alerts. This is a cool idea where you can put in words to a filter and it searches new web pages, and if those words are found, it send you an email or text alert with a link to the page. Simple enough, and it works, sort of.

You can also put in “NOT” words, which, according to their instructions, will NOT send you an alert if any of the “not” words are on any page triggered by the filter words. Again, sounds simple, show me “Apple phone” NOT “Macintosh” and you should see any page that has Apple and phone but only if the word Macintosh is not on the page.

The only problem is, the NOT words do not work, and the alert comes anyway. Sometimes, the “NOT” word is actually even in the subject of the message they send you. In my case, I was searching for pages with my wife’s name, “Dianne Jacob” but since there is a Dianne Jacob in San Diego, I said NOT Diego.

Then I receive a message with “San Diego supervisor Dianne Jacob said…”

OK, I will report the bug. Except, when you go to Yahoo Alerts, there is an FAQ, but no way to submit a bug. After abit of hacking, I DID find a bug page for Yahoo mail, navigated to the strange URL, changed the word “mail” to “alert” (trial an error several times) in the URL and believe it or not, was presented with a HELP FORM for Yahoo Alerts.

Ok, first question: Why would Yahoo NOT want the users of the service to report bugs? Damn, if I had a software product and people wanted to report bugs, bring them on. So why hide this page?

I filled out the form, selected “suspected bug” in the reason pop-up, pressed submit, and received a form email back thanking me for contacting Yahoo Alerts. Cool, maybe they will fix it?

My joy was short lived. Today, I received another email from Yahoo, and this is what it said:

—————
From: Yahoo Alerts
Subject: Suspect Bug (case number deleted)

Hello Owen,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Alerts.

Unfortunately, your message to us was missing full Internet headers. Without full headers we will be unable to further investigate this matter.

Email headers are used to deliver a message over the Internet and contain a record of the specific route that the message took. Full header information is included in every message that is sent.

——————-

Uh, hello? The message was sent to Yahoo on their website through one of their forms. I have used web forms, why would they expect it to have any headers at all? What are they talking about?

And why would they need a header in the second place? I submitted a bug, described the problem, gave an example, and told them how to repeat it, and they tell me my message, sent through a form on their website, is missing headers, and because of that, they cannot help me.

Has help become so stupid and incompetent that this is the answer they send? No wonder Yahoo is loosing market share and is in trouble. If this is any indicator of the caliber of people Yahoo hires, they deserve to go away.

Anyone else know of another system that does this? Personally, with answers like this, I want to look elsewhere for service.

Sheesh!