Complaint Review: Yahoo Geocities

On February 7, 2003 I attempted to update my GeoCities Plus website using Microsoft FrontPage 2000 (a popular web editing and publishing application that allows site updating from the program,) like I have been doing for the 2 1/2 years.

I kept getting the error message "The server sent a response which FrontPage could not parse. If you are connecting to a FrontPage server, check with the server's administrator to make sure that the FrontPage server extentions are installed properly." I figured that Geocities was having some problems with their servers, so I put it off for a while. (Note: the last time that I updated my page on Febrary 3rd, it updated without any problem.)

When I went back later in the day, the same problem came up again. This time I picked up the phone and called Yahoo's main office in California. My previous dealing with them have been without problem, so I expected a quick resolution.

When I explained the problem that I was having, the customer support technician told me that they no longer allow customers with the Geocities Plus package to use FrontPage to update their accounts, that they have to use the web-based interface for site management. I asked since when did this policy come into effect, and she said that it's been in place since January 1st.

I then asked her to escalate this call to her supervisor. She did so, and I was sent to a technical support person with Geocities. I explained the problem to him, and mentioned that I did not recieve any notice via e-mail that my service was changed. He then asked me for my phone number and asked if he could call me back later in the evening after he looked into the problem. He called me back later in the evening (9:00pm EST) and told me that he could not do anything about it at his level.

I then asked him to escalate it to whomever is in charge of setting these rules and he did so. I told him that I expect to hear from someone higher up at Yahoo by 9:00am PST (12:00pm EST) to explain why they changed their level of service for paid accounts without informing the customers of that fact via e-mail (which Yahoo has done when they announced the change of their POP3 e-mail access to a paid service.)

Note: The account that I have with Geocities is only a $4.95/month small website, but I chose it because I wanted people to be able to go to my website without being bombarded with pop-ups. People will say "you get what you pay for," but I have been a steady customer of Yahoo and Geocities for some time now, and as a consumer I expect to be informed when a change is happening.

Dean
Syracuse, New York
U.S.A.