The "helpdesk"

[Suff]

After my mail account failed yesterday I tried to log in and check why. Yahoo sold off their business mail to Abaco and I've been steadfastly ignoring their "set up your account" emails until I absolutely had to do something about it. Mainly because I was of the firm belief that I'd probably have to go and pull us out of the system and set up the domain somewhere else.

Of course I tried the "migration" route and gave it my mail address I use to manage it. Which, of course, is on the domain they shut down because my card had expired and I had no notifications that 3 invoices had not been paid.

No mail. No way to activate. I called the helpdesk (US only number, thank god for skype to go) and got an Indian who didn't tell me what he was doing. He kept asking for the domain then the mail address I used to manage it. Which was, of course, failing. Eventually the light bulb went off in my head and I gave him my yahoo.com address which I had used in the very first instance to set the environment up. Bingo, he then says, open chrome (I don't have chrome), open Firefox he says, I don't have that either says I, I use IE, perfect he says, open that. By this time it's late, I need to drive 150 miles preferably before 2am and he's getting the wrong side of my tongue...

Then, says I, what do you want me to type into the address bar.

he starts "help" and I cut him off. With the rant "I don't want you to send me to a help page, I want you to fix the mess you've made without telling me anything". I was more than a little grumpy.

Whilst lambasting this guy another lightbulb goes off in my head. He's verified my yahoo account, I'm already in the mailbox and can see the mails. I go back to the original screen whilst lambasting the Indian guy about pitifully lame migration processes and put in my yahoo address, which it then sends a link to. I enter my new passwords and access the account.

I tell the Indian guy, thanks for very little and goodbye and put the phone down. I logged into the control panel and immediately saw the problem, 3 unpaid invoices. I pay the invoices and everything goes active and starts the work again.

Now I know why I didn't receive any of the notifications. They simply ignored my existing settings and sent all the later notifications to my Yahoo.com account which I simply never use and it gets zillions of spam mails which drown out all sense of any real emails.

Whilst I accept I am the "customer from hell" for someone on the helpdesk, he was also the "helpdesk from hell" for the customer (namely me).

Anyway, mail services restored and I'll have to get the rest of the account settings sorted sometime soon. I guess I'm going to migrate the mail somewhere but I have to get the domain out to another registrar first. Office 365 is looking good for me right now but I still have to think about that. It's not exactly simple and the whole point about the Yahoo small business is that it was really simple, they did everything, domain, mail, cheap payments, easy to handle. Now it's been sold off and I'm an unhappy bunny again.

The joys of companies and the internet. Nothing ever stays the same for long. You have to be flexible and can't rely on anything permanently. If I didn't dislike gmail so much I might move to Google. But I truly hate it so that avenue is out...

[cruiser2]

My technical knowledge is very limited. I can understand your frustration as I have just managed to delete my contacts on my mobile phone.
I am thinking of creating a new gmail address as I am getting a lot of spam in the existing one. It seems the existing one is being bounced round the world as I get messages from Russia, the Far East and America.
Fortunately, there is a local computer repair shop which I use if I have a problem. Does not always charge me for advice. Did a complete clean, both physically and software for £40.00.
Hope you get everthing sorted.

[Suff]

Yeah it's all fixed for now Cruiser.

The problem with mail addresses is the harvesting that goes no now. Halfords, give me your email address for your electronic receipt. Erm, no, I don't want you selling my mail address or using it for your data mining thanks....

If you want to set up a new gmail account you can use forwarding to forward only the mails you do want to your new account. As documented here.