Please Boycott Yahoo

(UPDATE: Thanks to Elizabeth L., who after reading this post suggested I demand to move up the management chain at Yahoo Customer Service. It worked to the degree I extracted more concessions, including a substantial payment toward future travel in lieu of an outright refund. I have canceled the trip, and will spend the extra time with my kids.)

Tonight I am launching a campaign urging anyone and everyone who reads these words to boycott Yahoo. This is hard for me to do, because I have long been a fan of the company. But it has revealed itself to be much less than I'd hoped it would be, in two specific ways that have hurt me and my family very deeply.

Over the past year Yahoo has managed to confuse my closest friend into thinking I was "active" on its Personals site, when I had never so much as done anything other than open and delete irritating messages like "We have a match for you," even though I'd closed my own Personals account over three years earlier (soon after I met her).

It turns out that Yahoo's policy is to continue stating that you are "active" even if all you do is throw away their insipid attempts to introduce you to people you don't want to meet -- years after you've decided the last thing you need in your life is an online dating service, especially one as insipid at Yahoo's.

Of more immediate relevance: Several weeks ago, I booked a trip via Yahoo Travel to New York later this week for a meeting I wanted to attend. At that time, however, I had no idea the events that would ensue.

It turns out that if I were to go on this trip, I will have to be away from my children three weeks out of four at a time when they really need me to be around. Of the three trips, this one is the most expendable. After all, I am to be only a minor attendee at a meeting that will go fine without me.

Therefore I tried to cancel this trip tonight, but the inevitable unctuous customer service rep in Bangalore informed me that if I did so, I would have to pay an enormous fine, essentially half the cost of the trip!

Yahoo is responsible for all of this nonsense. It has inserted fine print into the booking deals to trick people like you and me.

So tonight I am declaring a one-man war on Yahoo. Please join me. My hope is that we can bring some sense back to a company that appears to have become lost in its mindless pursuit of profits.

BOYCOTT YAHOO!

I wonder whether some of you may have experienced similar insults? If so, the only mechanism I can think of to express our shared outrage, for now, is for you to reTweet this and try to start a movement.

Please help.