Abuse response [Was: RE: Yahoo Mail Update]

Wed Apr 16 19:39:05 UTC 2008

On 16 Apr 2008, at 13:33 , Simon Waters wrote:

> Ask anyone in the business "if I want a free email account who do I  
> use.." and
> you'll get the almost universal answer Gmail.

I think amongst those not in the business there are regional trends,  
however. Around this neck of the woods (for some reason) the answer  
amongst your average, common-or-garden man in the street is "yahoo!".

I don't know why this is. But that's my observation.

There are also the large number of people using Y! mail who don't  
realise they're using Y! mail, because the telco or cableco they use  
for access have outsourced mail operations to Y!, and there are still  
(apparently) many people who assume that access providers and mail  
providers should match. In those cases choice of mail provider may  
have far more to do with "price of tv channel selections" or  
"availability of long-distance voice plans" than anything to do with e- 
mail.

So, with respect to your other comments, correlation between technical/ 
operational competence and customer choice seems weak, from my  
perspective. If there's competition, it may not driven by service  
quality, and the conclusion that well-staffed abuse desks promote  
subscriber growth is, I think, faulty.

Joe