Lengthy Yahoo Mail Outage Causes Outrage

It's been a tough couple of months for users of Yahoo Mail. Not long ago the Internet firm pushed out an overhauled user interface that alienated more users than it pleased. Now, many Yahoo Mail users can't even connect to their accounts and check their messages.

Yahoo Mail has been suffering outages since early last week. When reports of the outage first emerged, Yahoo took to Twitter to acknowledge that it was experiencing technical difficulties, but promised the issues would be resolved quickly.

Yahoo Mail Users Knocked Offline For Days

"We know some of our users are unable to use Yahoo Mail. We're on it [and] trying to restore access in a few hours," the company tweeted. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

Unfortunately, service was not restored to all Yahoo Mail users within a few hours. Instead, it appears thousands of users remained locked out of their accounts for days on end.

Worse still, frustrated and angry Yahoo Mail users have apparently been ignored by the firm.

"They sent out no notification ahead of time and have not responded to my email," noted Yahoo Mail user Karen Bonventre. "Yahoo collects an alternate email address and has not used it to tell us what is going on." (Source: nytimes.com)

Last Friday Yahoo reported that there were problems with both P.O.P. mail services (which are stored locally) and Yahoo I.M.A.P. mail (which is stored by Yahoo's servers).

The firm said it had mostly addressed the former issue, but was still dealing with I.M.A.P. problems.

Yahoo CEO Apologizes to Users

Yahoo hasn't officially announced how many of its millions of Yahoo Mail users have been affected by the issue. However, company chief executive officer Marissa Mayer has offered an apology for those people prevented from viewing their messages.

"We really let you down this week," Mayer said. "We can, and we will, do better in the future." (Source: pcmag.com)

Of course, that apology may not satisfy everyone. AllThingsD writer Kara Swisher says this is hardly the first service failure for Yahoo, which has been "woefully negligent in informing its users about ... problems." (Source: allthingsd.com)