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April 23, 2008

Yahoo “Refunds” Disappointed Search Advertiser $9 Billion. Now, That’s Customer Service!

Erick Schonfeld

39 comments »

yahoo-refund-2.pngDespite the decent first quarter earnings it announced yesterday and all the progress it claims to be making in closing the search marketing gap with Google, Yahoo still has plenty of advertisers unsatisfied with the return Yahoo gives them on their search marketing dollars. One of them (name redacted) sent us the correspondence below from Yahoo Search Marketing, which he received after closing an account and requesting a refund of the remaining $375 balance.

Imagine his surprise when a Yahoo customer service rep informed him that a refund of nearly $9 billion was waiting for him! Luckily for Yahoo shareholders, he only found a credit for the original $375 when he checked his account.

And this is the same company advertisers are supposed to trust to be able to calculate what their minimum bids on search ads are going to be.

From: Yahoo! Search Marketing
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 9:36 AM
Subject: Re: Case #1604XXXXX
To: XXXXX@gmail.com

Apr 17 2008 09:36 PT

Hello AXXXX,

As you requested, we have completed refunding $8962385800 to your VISA ending in 7134. Depending on your bank, you should find this refund reflected on your next credit card statement.

This transaction is also reflected in the Billing Transaction Detail Report, available in the Reports section of your account. You can find this report by doing the following:

1. Log into your account at the following link: https://login12.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/adui/signinXXXXXX.
2. Click the Reports tab.
3. In the Financial Reports area, click Billing Transaction Detail.

Sincerely,

XXXXX Smith
Customer Solutions
Yahoo! Search Marketing

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  1. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Yahoo、不服な検索広告主に$9Bを「払い戻し」。これぞ顧客サービス！

    April 23rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm

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  3. Yahoo “reembolsó” 9.000 millones de dólares a un cliente

    April 24th, 2008 at 5:08 am

  4. Los errores de Yahoo! y su sistema de publicidad - Cybernauta

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  5. is yahoo! in the toilet? just read the writing on the wall.

    April 26th, 2008 at 11:38 pm

Comments

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  1. Jason

    April 23rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    LYKE OMGZ, THIS IS SO NEWS WORTHY.

  2. Michael Arrington

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    the rails guys are still pissed, obviously.

  3. Ant Onaf

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    You sure the person who sent you the correspondence didn’t put these numbers in themselves for link bait activity?? If not, then Yahoo! is a class act!

  4. Brandon

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    Yahoo once over refunded me $3k.
    I contacted them a few times about it and was eventually told to simply “not worry about it”.

  5. Ryan Waggoner

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Not only is this not news-worthy, but the headline is misspelled and hard to understand.

  6. baah-baah-the-black-sheep

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    I requested a refund of $50 and they told me to fu#$ off.

  7. gilltots

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    these comments are all too short and easy to read. can someone please start uploading video comments?

  8. alan jones

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    I’m disappointed with Yahoo! as a user, can I get my wasted time back?

  9. david

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    This isn’t news-worthy

  10. Michael Arrington

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    FREE BLAINE COOK

  11. Will J

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    That would certainly wake you up during a morning email-reading session.

  12. Raul Riera

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm

    I want to see a VISA card with a 9 Billion limit, April’s fool is over :P

  13. SteveF

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    In a related story, this same guy got charged a late fee for renting, and never returning, Superman 3 and Office Space.

  14. PRNewsExpress

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:30 pm

    I think it is really newsworthy :)

    JBug

  15. Voice 2.0

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    You’re equating customer service to giving a refund. If a customer’s service is great, there should never be a refund.

  16. A.O.

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    This was an honest mistake, the rep probably pasted in the user’s account ID rather than the $ value. These emails are put together manually, not through a mail merge or other automated system. It has nothing to do with how the company calculates their min. bids or any other metric.

  17. nem

    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:58 pm

    @voice 2.0:

    I think you’re equating sincerity with sarcasm.

  18. Jason

    April 23rd, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    @nem - I think you are giving Erick way too much credit.

  19. Voice 2.0

    April 23rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    @nem

    Have you ever worked in Customer Service?

  20. johns

    April 23rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    @12 (Raul Riera) - I want to see a VISA card with a 9 Billion limit

    Maybe Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, etc.?

  21. Gleb Esman

    April 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    Contrary to many negative posts - I found that organic traffic from yahoo is about 3 times more converting, than from other sources, including Google.

    And that was after analyzing about 2 million of raw log file records for the client.

    Gleb

  22. allan

    April 23rd, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    Yahoo is for saddles!

  23. John

    April 23rd, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    There is a difference between Techcrunch and Valleywag. I’d appreciate if the difference remained.

  24. Hendra

    April 23rd, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    damn, i just wasted 2 minutes of my life. about to post a video comment soon.

  25. G

    April 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    This news and post are so bad that it should have been blogged by Duncan Riley….

  26. Sudoku Maniac

    April 24th, 2008 at 4:14 am

    9 billion to a single company ? If a single company was advertising for 9 million, how much did it profit from ?

  27. deb

    April 24th, 2008 at 4:35 am

    if this kind of news come in this blog then very sonn tech crunch is going down

  28. BlueElephant

    April 24th, 2008 at 5:40 am

    This is telephone number of somebody.

    I dont think this Yahoo’s mistake. Customer care rep. would have Ctrl-C-Ctrl-Ved some body’s telephone number rather then the amount. Dont be surprised if this is the phone number of the same person who got this email or may be this is the number of the girlfriend of the CSrep.

  29. Tulouse

    April 24th, 2008 at 6:51 am

    This looks like a mail mapping problem rather than someone actually thinking of returing millions:
    It’s the 10 digit account number. Simple as that.

  30. Adam G.

    April 24th, 2008 at 7:47 am

    This isn’t news. Those customer service e-mails are generated by a form the rep fills out. I can’t imagine where the number for the typo came from.

  31. dave

    April 24th, 2008 at 8:50 am

    great job! NOW you’re writing like valleywag…

  32. Mary

    April 24th, 2008 at 10:21 am

    Taking an honest mistake and running with it is so pathetic! Here’s an idea…. POST SOMETHING THAT’S ACTUALLY WORTH PEOPLE’S TIME.

  33. The Googlopoly Has Come

    April 24th, 2008 at 10:34 am

    “FREE BLAINE COOK”

    :-D Haha!

    Perfect response to the whiners…

  34. Jayson

    April 24th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    I’d have been pretty upset after going out and spending a few mill on some homes and a jet :)

    Good news for the shareholders

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