I got stung by them on day 1. I signed up for their marketing service and during the signup was taken through the steps of setting up a dummy account (eg. test, test.com). Didn’t really know what I was filling out but it seemed thats what I had to do to get an account set up. Yahoo then took $30 out of my account which I took to be the minimum amount to set up the account. Fine.

The next day they sent me the exact same email message for taking $30. I assumed it was the same message just repeated for some strange reason. The next day I got the same message and thats when I got suspicious. So I went to my Yahoo acccount and discovered 112 clicks on my keyword “test”, based on 17,000 impressions, and that I’d been charged $78 for that. Neat huh?

Admittedly my fault for being a dummy when I signed up. Funny thing though, I didn’t encounter the same problems with google and msn, who I’d also signed up with.

Anyway, just thought I’d pass that on for those looking to sign up with Yahoo

One thing that you didn’t mention are the annoying “Alert Notifications” e-mails.

I’ve had multiple accounts shut down by them and 3 years after the account has been shut down, I keep getting e-mails that an editor has reviewed my listings and removed certain ads or keywords.

How STUPID is that? No wonder they aren’t making any money – their editors are morons and keep wasting their time reviewing listings that will never be active again.

Yahoo is run by retards.

We hate their system too. They think it is clever to restrict your control over your own money, constantly topping up their balance from your credit card, not showing the latest data, and not allowing you to remove a credit card from their setup without going thru a rigmarole.

You can never ever get to a situation where they don’t hold some of your money. When you try to spend what you have left, they simply take more from you to make up for it. This kind of ‘clever’ sales technique really backfires, as it just increases your determination not to spend money with them.

If it was my choice we would never use them. Unfortunately we still have a few customers who think they bring business.

The reporting sucks, the ad creation sucks. When signing up i got a message saying something wrong with my credit card payment. I went into the new account and added the credit card. Never said anything about billing. So i contacted yahoo. Received a message back the next day that is was indeed charged.

24 hours later I go into the account and my campaign was on hold. Maybe because it passed my daily maximum? I contacted yahoo again. Though i did notice that the reports showed no clicks. I got a message the next day from yahoo and it said i had so many clicks and passed my daily. Well with a daily max it can pass it? Well it took me past the 2nd day to see the activity. So in other words with a big budget you could go way over and not know for how long?

Also when you stop some keywords that i noticed i was paying a lot of money for with no ROI it said please note the stop use of keywords is not immediate. Hmmm…. why so slow? So you can lose more money? Seems there are not much tools available either. Pretty certain i will cancel the account shortly. I know it is early but i already have results with google and a lot of help from their online tools. Also google is only a few hours behind.

Bill