services | Blog about business and product management

Last week I subscribed to Yahoo music. Yeah, I know. But I was going to give it a try anyway.

Surely, the service sucked from the very beginning – you have to download a special player (called Yahoo Jukebox), that downloads tons of crap while playing my purchased music. This itself is a very fishy concept – why would company force me to view ads while I enjoy a content I paid for. If the music was free – I would have understood the ads. But I already paid for this – why do you have to feed me all those stupid ads full-screen at 1600×1200 pixels resolution, if I only want to hear music – is totally beyond me. Of course, finding something useful (unless it’s a today’s MTV hit) is next to impossible.

But the real excitement begins when you are trying to cancel the account. Do you think you can cancel from JukeBox? Wrong, you can only upgrade. Do you think you can cancel from Yahoo Music Home page? Wrong again. In fact, the only way you can cancel the service is to go to My Account page, select Manage Premium Services, then Manage Service link next to Yahoo! Music Subscription, then Cancel Service. But you didn’t think it would be THAT easy, didn’t you? While following this narrow path to freedom you are asked for your password twice. Upon the clicking on Cancel Service link another screen appears that (legitimately) asks you for the reason of your cancellation – I selected “The service was difficult to use”. Then another screen apologetically offers to get online help or contact support. However, if you insist on cancelling – hey, we warned ya! – you need to enter your Yahoo password again (third time). Guess what happen then? Wrong, you need to enter your password again. And again. And again. And – it’s the infinite loop. You also cannot change the payment method, should this idea cross your mind.

I do realize that this might be some sort of glitch in software. I do realize Yahoo doesn’t really benefit from my 70 bucks that it is trying not to give me back so hard. But I do realize one important thing – if I trap the customer in a loop like that, I’ll probably loose more then just one customer. Guess what just happened to Yahoo?

Sometimes I wonder, what makes people take the job, promise to make something, after the allotted time tell you that you didn’t promise them enough pay. Not only that is stupid, it is also very non-professional. Since you’ve agreed to the terms – it is expected that you will abide by them. How would it look if you’ve done a job, but then I would say that you didn’t do it good enough and just wouldn’t pay? That would be wrong, indeed, so why do people think that if they spend your time and then tell you “you’re not paying enough” you would offer them more? Just because they are so great that they can’t even accomplish simple design? Amazing.

Another wonder comes from message boards. You post a message to hire a freelancer. Those who have been turned down (or even those who thought they would) start telling others that you are not professional. Who cares? Do they think they are the only ones who can design web sites? There’s a good word that perfectly describes these actions and the word is “masturbation”. Those who want to get paid – they ask for terms. They may like the terms or not, but that’s a whole another story. Weird people, weird indeed.