Most of you know I rarely go out of my way to publicly voice such a negative opinion as I’m about to issue. Especially against a company for which: a) I hold stock, and b) I believe is one of the best large companies in Silicon Valley.
Today I signed up for Yahoo! Merchant Services for my father’s HeartsongStudios.com (a small time marimba making studio in Northern Cali). I’ve used Y!’s store system with partner sites at iofy, such as TheLanguageStop.com (a foreign language and ELT/ESL specialty store). I like Yahoo!’s store product and recommend it to others.
The signup process was a piece of cake. Zipped through the steps until the moment after my credit card was processed. At that point the added Security Key was requested. Since no security key had been initiated for the account, I was asked for information to generate a new one.
- First question: “What is your name?” – duhhh…
- Second question, “When is your birthday?” – better, but easily available on Facebook and elsewhere.
- Third question: “What is your favorite city?” – I don’t remember, I’ll put in my hometown.
The third answer was wrong. I’ve had my Y! account almost as long as Y! has been in business. It’s probably a secret question I set a long time ago. Getting the third question wrong one time locked me out of merchant services and prompted to call Y!’s security team. Fine.
The wait time was minimal on the phone. As soon as a Y! human was on the line things went downhill. Here is an almost exact transcript of the conversation which took place. Names of people and places are replaced so you don’t get any ideas for h4c|<ing me, and so Y! doesn’t discipline the rep without learning more:
Yesterday while snagging a bagel at the VMware seminar there was something interesting on the restaurant’s TV. ESPN posed the question, “Which 23-year-old has a better life: LeBron James or Mark Zuckerberg?”
I was very pleased by a question in today’s press Q&A at Apple’s iPhone SDK release announcement. I 
