August 31st, 2009
An odd Yahoo Mail search bug that requires escalation pronto
Can you imagine your email without a search box? I couldn’t until my Yahoo Mail account lost its search mojo.
Email becomes useless without a functional search. And to make matters worse I had to find invites to one (yes there are three) fantasy football leagues. The clock was ticking for my drafts.
Here’s what I would get when I searched in Yahoo Mail:
It wouldn’t find anything with my name or terms like “fantasy football.” I dutifully went to the Yahoo help section and found similar issues here, here and here. None of those suggestions worked, but the problem I encountered had been seen by a few other users.
With that in mind I emailed the Yahoo public relations contacts handling the news that the company was dressing up tools like Yahoo Mail and Messenger. I said it’s great you guys are advancing your products, but I just want my Yahoo Mail search to work.
From there, my problem was escalated to a concierge, who had a ridiculously soothing voice. She could have been meditating (Microsoft Word suggested ‘medicating’ and that could have worked too). She said the help ticket has been passed along and she would relay what the fix was.
A few hours later, I was told:
- The Mail Search fix can only be handled internally by Yahoo techies;
- Yahoo migrated my mailbox to another server;
- And my inbox was rebuilt.
The only reason I got this response is that I had a contact with Yahoo before—and a small megaphone via this blog. My next question: What happens to those poor folks on the help message boards that can’t use search?
The response was that Yahoo will escalate those problems to be fixed. I encouraged my concierge to troll any help query that includes “Mail search not working” and elevate those problems. What’s unclear is how prevalent the curious Yahoo Mail bug is. Should you have the similar issue with Yahoo Mail drop me an email and I’ll try and hook you up with the extremely helpful customer care department. Hopefully, Yahoo will kill the bum server and you’ll get your search back.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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