Yahoo Directory Username Lost - What to Do?

[geilt]

Here is quite a story dealing with Yahoo!

I became IT Manager of my company after the website had been running for a year.

The Original IT Manager set up our Yahoo! Directory listing, long ago.

It was accepted, and in there until the billing ran up for the year of course.

So I go to register it, and lo and behold, find no listing but unable to register with no error message. Turns out the old listing just turned itself off, not allowing anyone else to register.

So I give Yahoo! a Call. I want to pay them my $399.00 and get listed again.

"Sorry Sir we cant do anything without the username tied to the account."

"Great" I think to myself as I tell the Agent: "But, we don't have it, the IT manager who registered it no longer works for us and left us no record."

"Call them and find out what it is we cant help you" they rudely respond. I have my boss, a experienced businessman on the phone. He gets frustrated because they keep repeating the same things, not listening to a word he says. "Are you not listening? We own the site, we want to pay you for the listing, What is your problem?" After 20 more minutes of arguing we hang up.

Ao we call up and ask the old IT manager, who happens to be a total goofball and very disorganized; Who had not kept any records of any information regarding her work for the company. She doesn't know where the information is, not even what e-mail address she used to register her account with, or any answer to the secret question, nothing. Not even any idea what credit card we payed for the account with. Totally Useless.

So I think of a nifty Idea. I call Yahoo! up again...thinking myself super smart for this one!

I tell the Yahoo Agent, "Our IT Manager is no longer "With us"...and we do not have the information. But we own the site and want to list."

The Agent proceeds to ask me yet again, "Well, we need the answer to the secret question or at least the username"...

I repeat, "How would I be able to retrieve that data? What i mean by the Agent is no longer with us, I meant she passed away"...

The Agent is startled and says, "Oh my, let me go ask my manager hold please."

I wait for five minutes, thinking I may have something here....

The agent comes back on the phone and says, "Ok, well this is what you have to do, send a certified copy of the death certificate notarized by a Justice of the Peace stating you are the owners of the website to this address by certified mail."

At this point my expression is incredulous, I am startled beyond belief as I write down the address...

So to this day, my nationally focused website cannot be listed in Yahoo! Directory. We own the site, we own the Domain, but because we don't know the damn Yahoo Username we cant do anything about it.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[banless]

This is just crazy. I can't believe they won't take the money. It must have something to do with the way the system is setup. I heard of companies such as godaddy asking you to send in a photo id to prove who you are, but a death certificate is just insane.

[swedal]

I would tell them the truth and keep asking to speak with their supervisor until you found a person willing to help you. Take down all the names or ids of anyone you speak to.

If no one assists you write an article and publish it. Someone from Yahoo may take notice then.