Dear Flickr,
Today I decided to give you some more money, by upgrading a second seldom-used account to pro. Of course, you’ve just done that thing where “old skool” users have to switch to using a Yahoo! account for Flickr, which means I needed to go dust off the old Yahoo! account that logically matches that Flickr account.
I must have had, in the course of my life, 10 Yahoo! accounts. If I was thrilled about that, all but one wouldn’t be long-deactivated. But I’ve had to reactivate before, forgot to log in for 90 days, it wasn’t a huge deal.
It has now become a huge deal. This old Yahoo! account I want to use apparently cannot be reactivated unless I have purchased something via Yahoo! using a credit card and that account. If I had done so, I could reactivate my account by giving Yahoo! that credit card number. In other words, I am useless to Yahoo! unless they have somehow made money off me in the past. No matter all the personal information I provided when I set up the account, like my birthday and an alternate email address and the name of my damn dog or place of birth or first car or whatever the hell it was.
There’s no point in me predicting the imminent business failure of Yahoo! and Flickr because, obviously, other people’s money seems to be getting to them just fine, but I’d love to know who’s doing User Experience at Flickr and whether he or she goes to work in the morning doing a little dance or with a slight stomachache.
As a user, it hurts my feelings when someone doesn’t want my money, it hurts my feelings when someone with whom I’ve had a really long relationship (hint: my primary Yahoo! account is first initial underscore last name with no numbers at the end) starts trying to scam me, and it hurts my feelings when I’m treated like crap because I haven’t (or appear to have not, as is the case when I’ve had a million other accounts) spent any money. It’s like making me buy something so I can use the bathroom, even though I’ve previously purchased many a greasy treat.
Man, I had Ideas. I had Plans. All I wanted was a Flickr Pro account in my brand using a Yahoo! account that I might possibly remember to log in to every 90 days instead of having to go register Yahoo! ID flickrsux123456789123456789. And somebody somewhere (hello? UE person?) has just decided to overlook how appalling “oh well, just get another ID” looks to a user.
From the Flickr FAQ:
If I lose access to my Yahoo! account or my account is deactivated, will I be able to sign in to my Flickr account?
If you use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr, you need to have access to that Yahoo! ID in order to get in to Flickr. If you lose access to that account, we can help you get back in to Flickr. In the case of persistent problems with your Yahoo! ID, you may be able to switch your account to be associated with a different Yahoo! ID
In other words, if you didn’t pony up some shopping under your Yahoo! ID, or you did but you aren’t willing to use your credit card number as a password, fuck you. Get another ID. Get a new one every 90 goddamn days, or just go to hell. Someone else will give us money - speaking of, if the Yahoo! ID deactivates and you have a pro account and get sick of all this, do they give you your remaining money back? Or will they only do that if you did a little shopping with your completely unrememberable Yahoo! ID?
It just sucks. It’s not illegal, it’s probably the result of merging with a behemoth company whose UE engineers are, I don’t know, dead or made of cement or something*, but it’s sad to see what had been a pretty cool user-focused company hit this kind of snag.
If anyone has any insight, my email address is lyn.never at, you know, gmail.
Sigh,
Me
*PS I get it. I’m a one-woman IT department and I get what a monstrous snarl it is when two systems merge. Sometimes I have to tell my users to suck up an inconvenience. The thing is, I’m not Yahoo!, that’s my problem. A more reasonable user merge IS possible, and if anyone has the resources, it’s Yahoo! But they’re busy requesting credit card numbers in lieu of security, which probably should have been a line that someone, somewhere drew.