This just in from an old friend who only gets pissed-off when it is justified.  He says Yahoo Mail has been going downhill for awhile and has lately become unusable. Is this an isolated incident or does it affect all 200+ million Yahoo Mail customers?  What’s your experience?

Here is his:

This is unacceptable.

We can log into Yahoo Mail.
We can read our email.
We can move or delete our email.
WE CANNOT SEND EMAIL.

When we try to send email, we are asked to enter a Captcha code.  We then receive a Yahoo error message stating the message was not sent. Due to spam problem sending has been disabled on our account.

The message goes on to say the problem should clear itself up in a couple hours, it usually takes a few days.

I’ve reported this exact problem at least 5 times in the past week.

Most of our PCs are running Windows XP with the latest versions if IE and Firefox, specifically Firefox 3.5.8.  Five of my family members’ email accounts are unable to send mail.  Two households on our street are having problems with their Yahoo accounts.  Other members of my family in other states are having problems with their accounts too.  The problem spans several states and several ISPs.

We have kids on trips.  Their travel arrangements are handled by email.  If email does not work, they can’t get their tickets.  My wife is looking for a new job,  but she can’t apply for jobs or respond to queries.  A coworker of mine was just laid off, I am trying to help him find a new job.  With an unreliable email system it makes things difficult — and it is hurting yet another family’s livelihood.

Yahoo! Mail Error Form (Error Code 15)

*  All fields required unless otherwise noted.
Attention:

We are in the process of upgrading all of our Yahoo! Mail servers as part of our ongoing efforts to give you the best Mail service possible. There is no need to complete this form because we already know that you’ve received this error. It is temporary and should clear up within a couple of hours. If it persists, please do come back and let us know. Thanks!

What are you going to do about this, Yahoo?????