Becky Says...

May 14, 2001

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Doesn't Work for Me

I usually stay out of the fray when people start criticizing big corporate entities, often because I don't know enough about the details of the matter to feel that I have anything intelligent to say. But I will jump in here and make a comment about Yahoo and their not-so-recent acquisition of eGroups. And I am going to agree with those who don't like it.

I discovered today that it's impossible for a person to change an e-mail address in the Yahoogroups setup. Or if it is possible, they have the how-to and the where-to so well hidden as to make it impractical.

I'm on several discussion groups through Yahoogroups. And for whatever reason, some group e-mail addressed to me has been doing what's known as a soft bounce---where it doesn't get to me, but doesn't tell the sender that my e-mail addy is invalid, either.

In order to have a Yahoogroups account over which you have any control whatever, it must be associated with a Yahoo identity. Okay, mine was. I decided that since I have the Yahoo address anyway, I might as well use it to receive the group mail. Nice idea, but no way, apparently. I spent most of my lunch break today looking through the instructions for Yahoogroups to change the address, and found none.

Apparently the only thing I could have done was unsubscribe from all my groups, and resubscribe under a new identity. I didn't want to take the time to do that, so I left things alone for the time being.

But I will say to the Yahoo powers-that-be that things like this are what make you get the reputation of sucking big time. I like your directory; I like a lot of other things that you offer. This, on the other hand, I don't like at all.

Text © copyright 2000-2001 Becky