Re: Re: yahoo groups pricing survey

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 2/19/2002 9:53:50 PM Pacific Standard Time,

trudyjh@... writes:

<< I didn't get in in time to take the survey either. I agree

with - yahoo is getting incredibly annoying, if it

gets any worse, we should think about moving elsewhere.

I no longer track stocks or read mail on yahoo, because of the

incredibly intrusive ads. >>

I agree with Trudy! I think Yahoo is overstepping reasonable boundaries.

However, I belong to two other Yahoo groups (completely unrelated to Afib),

and no mention has been made in either group of charging for service. Is

Yahoo showing discrimination in picking on the perceived weakness of poor

afibbers like us while continuing to provide a free home to our seemingly

healthier counterparts?

I, for one, WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT PAY TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS GROUP. This is

not because the group lacks value but because I resent being manipulated for

commercial purposes. Since resentment has a very negative effect on the

heart, I will remove myself from a situation which causes resentment.

Many no-charge, possible havens exist out there in Cyberland to which this

group could be moved or through which a new group could be started with no

charge. If necessary, I will start a new group rather than support the crass

commercialism and manipulation of Yahoo.com. If Yahoo can't quell its

voracious appetite for wealth, it may find itself in the starving condition

of so many former dot.com companies.

I think it would be a good idea for group members who agree with Trudy and me

to express your unequivocal opinions to Yahoo.com. The " survey " has expired,

but fortunately our right to free speech remains. :-)

in sinus in Seattle

[Guest guest]

<<

Through the years I have been very active on The Motley Fool Board

online and I am the Treasurer for an OnLine Investment Club. Our

Club's financial records are kept on an accounting website called

Bivio. Both Boards have recently started to charge for their

services. It would appear many sites are now adopting some sort of

pricing policy.

If there were *no* fee for these sites, I certainly could tolerate

the Ads!

Ellen

68 NC>>

it sounds like there will be a limited free version still available which will

probably still meet our requirements - though the details are a bit vague at

the moment. I'm hoping we wont have to move .

--

D (33, Leeds, UK)

[Guest guest]

<<I agree with Trudy! I think Yahoo is overstepping reasonable boundaries.

However, I belong to two other Yahoo groups (completely unrelated to Afib),

and no mention has been made in either group of charging for service. Is

Yahoo showing discrimination in picking on the perceived weakness of poor

afibbers like us while continuing to provide a free home to our seemingly

healthier counterparts?>>

this was an announcement on yahoo groups main page and I think it applys to

all yahoo groups.My brother spotted it on another list he is on past the info

on to me. You never know, yahoo might decide that certain sections, like

illness, should remain free.

<<I, for one, WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT PAY TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS GROUP. This is

not because the group lacks value but because I resent being manipulated for

commercial purposes. Since resentment has a very negative effect on the

heart, I will remove myself from a situation which causes resentment.>>

Fair enough - I don't think I'd pay either but only because I know there are

still free options (worst case is I can set a group up on my web server if the

world went crazy - though this would take a bit of time and wouldn't have all

the bells and whistles that yahoo has so I'd prefer to stay here or move to

another free service first). I'm not angry with yahoo though -they are giving

us something very useful for 'free' I think it's entirely reasonable they

should try make money out of us even if they will probably fail- they

certainly don't make a bean out of me.

<<I think it would be a good idea for group members who agree with Trudy and

me

to express your unequivocal opinions to Yahoo.com. The " survey " has expired,

but fortunately our right to free speech remains. :-)

in sinus in Seattle >>

It's a shame we didn't catch the survey earlier but I encourage anyone with

strong opinions on the subject to contact yahoo. (anyone know yahoos email

address?)

--

D in AFibbing Leeds

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 2/20/2002 2:07:22 PM Pacific Standard Time,

james@... writes:

<< It's a shame we didn't catch the survey earlier but I encourage anyone with

strong opinions on the subject to contact yahoo. (anyone know yahoos email

address?) >>

,

I'm sorry to hear you're in afib now. I also went into afib today quite

unexpectedly in a real departure from my schedule. :-( Just when you think

you have this crazy affliction figured out, it does something unpredictable.

Regarding Yahoo's e-mail address, I discovered that they keep it very

well-hidden, probably with good reason. If you go to their search engine

home page and type in the search field the words: " complaint to Yahoo, " you

will find ample explanations for the secretive nature of their e-mail

address. The search yields numerous articles about people and groups who

have a very negative attitude toward Yahoo and are battling Yahoo in one way

or another. From one of the articles I was able to glean one e-mail address

for Yahoo: [abuse@...] As Trudy predicted, when I e-mailed this

address with my complaint, I received a standard form letter in return,

similar to an AOL form letter, which indicated that my complaint was not

read. Also, it turns out that the term " abuse " refers to e-mail infractions

of Yahoo's terms of service or rules, not ''abuse " of customers. :-) After

reaching this dead-end, I concluded that Yahoo does not have an e-mail

address for receiving complaints because they don't want to receive any

complaints. I will continue my quest to contact Yahoo, however, and post any

successful results here.

I just found out from the moderator of another list to which I belong that

there was a charge for keeping that list free of advertisements. In other

words, according to Yahoo's rules when the list began five years ago, the

list would be free only if we submitted to seeing ads on every post. He said

that he took up a collection three years ago to raise enough money to defray

the expense of keeping the list free of advertisements. I think he made the

collection during a convention of list members which I did not attend. Thus

I missed out on this bit of information.

Considering that this other list has always been charged to operate without

ads, perhaps Yahoo will not charge our list because it would seem that they

would have done so from the beginning as they did with the other list.

Although inability to pay is not the issue with me, I think we should try to

keep the list free because some afibbers may not be able to pay and may not

want to accept charity. Some have indicated that they are too sick to work,

and they probably don't have extra funds to pay for participation in a list,

even though the list offers valuable support and information. I guess we'll

have to wait and see what Yahoo " has in mind. "

in afib in Seattle

[Guest guest]

All what is weird that I tried to complete the survey and it was shut off. I

have not heard a thing from Yahoo about this .

Working in the industry , just about, there is talk that the internet is

free somebody has to pay for it.

C

> Re: Re: yahoo groups pricing survey

>

> I'm the owner/moderator of three other Yahoo sites and have not heard

> anything about any charges. Doesn't that seem strange? Maybe the bomb

> is yet to drop.

>

> I thoroughly agree with about many members who are not in a position

> to pay. Possibly Yahoo will take into consideration that we are a

> *Support Group*, and have pity!

>

> Is there any possibility that the Yahoo people lurk/scan any of the Boards

> and have any idea as to what is said here? I wasn't even aware of the

> Survey until mentioned it. Did anyone get into it, and if so, what

> was the gist of it?

>

> Ellen

> 68 NC

> **************************************

> From: Starfi6314@...

> I just found out from the moderator of another list to which I belong

> that there was a charge for keeping that list free of advertisements. In

> other words, according to Yahoo's rules when the list began five years

> ago, the list would be free only if we submitted to seeing ads on every

> post. (snip) I think we should try to keep the list free because some

> afibbers may not be able to pay and may not want to accept charity. Some

> have indicated that they are too sick to work (snip) in afib in

> Seattle

> ***********************

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

<<I'm the owner/moderator of three other Yahoo sites and have not heard

anything about any charges. Doesn't that seem strange?>>

It's probably just naivety from yahoo, they put a link on the group home page

(http://groups.yahoo.com) assuming that a lot of group users will see it when

in reality almost all of us will never visit the group home page we just go

direct to the useful stuff!

<<I thoroughly agree with about many members who are not in a position to

pay. Possibly Yahoo will take into consideration that we are a *Support

Group*, and have pity!>>

I hope so too.

<<Is there any possibility that the Yahoo people lurk/scan any of the Boards

and have any idea as to what is said here?>>

I'd say only a slim chance given the number of different groups.

<< I wasn't even aware of the Survey until mentioned it. Did anyone get

into it, and if so, what was the gist of it?>>

things on the line of the free version will be limited to the number of people

that can join each day (but it was high - I think 100) and there will be

smaller limits on disk space for the file/ picture area -which we hardly use

anyway but the free version was still quite large. I think the only area that

might be a problem is the number of messages per month and how much is

archived. ( I guess both of these could be overcome by setting up a news group

if it came to it). There was nothing really clear cut and there where a few

questions on whether I would be willing to pay for any of the services - they

all got a resounding no from me.

--

D back in NSR

[Guest guest]

I'm the owner/moderator of three other Yahoo sites and have not heard anything

about any charges. Doesn't that seem strange? Maybe the bomb is yet to drop.

I thoroughly agree with about many members who are not in a position to

pay. Possibly Yahoo will take into consideration that we are a *Support Group*,

and have pity!

Is there any possibility that the Yahoo people lurk/scan any of the Boards and

have any idea as to what is said here? I wasn't even aware of the Survey until

mentioned it. Did anyone get into it, and if so, what was the gist of it?

Ellen

68 NC

**************************************

From: Starfi6314@...

I just found out from the moderator of another list to which I belong that

there was a charge for keeping that list free of advertisements. In other

words, according to Yahoo's rules when the list began five years ago, the list

would be free only if we submitted to seeing ads on every post. (snip) I think

we should try to keep the list free because some afibbers may not be able to pay

and may not want to accept charity. Some have indicated that they are too sick

to work (snip) in afib in Seattle

***********************

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 2/21/2002 4:47:16 AM Pacific Standard Time,

Failteg@... writes:

<< Is there any possibility that the Yahoo people lurk/scan any of the Boards

and have any idea as to what is said here? I >>

I think there is a possibility that Yahoo people may be lurking in the

shadows on the boards since they have effectively erected an impenetrable

wall to block normal communication channels. Apparently they don't want to

encourage feedback because encouragement might require some kind of response

from them. However, the fact that they did set up an elusive, ephemeral

survey would indicate, I think, a kind of neurotic acceptance/avoidance

behavior. They want to know, but they don't want us to know that they know

what we're thinking because we might expect some redress of problems or

responsiveness from them. They may be just wanting to test the water without

being seen in the act of testing.

This reasoning led me to make an unequivocal and rather vociferous statement

here of my feelings about this issue. In case they are monitoring boards, if

we react to the possibility of charges for service without a a word about it

on this board, they will think we don't care about money issues. Our

discussion of the issue here may let them know we are concerned. At any

rate, discussion on this board seems to be our only recourse right now

because I just received vacuous responses to two other Yahoo e-mail addresses

which I tried. The responses were the usual automatically generated form

letters which had nothing whatever to do with my complaint.

It's easy to see why so many dot.com businesses are filing for bankruptcy.

I've read predictions that Yahoo may be following the bankruptcy trail of so

many other online services, and I can well believe in the possibility after

experiencing their total unresponsiveness to consumer input. We may be

forced by Yahoo's demise to find another venue for this board!

in sinus in Seattle