This bad:
From: y-alerts@reply.yahoo.com
Date: April 13, 2007 1:04:27 PM EDT
To: my email address
Apple delays launch of operating system
Notice the time date stamp. Apple issued the press release announcing this at 4:30 PM EDT yesterday. It showed up via RSS very, very shortly thereafter. Yahoo! Alerts has over a 20 hour lag time. How alerty is that?
Not very. And it is the reason that I have been trying to cancel them. I have a little problem though. According to the Web interface I do not have any alerts.
Well I obviously do because they keep showing up every day. I have been going back and forth with Yahoo! customer support about this for about a month now. After blaming it on 1) me, 2) timing, 3) my browser, and 4) my Internet connection this was their final resolution:
From: alerts-feedback@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Subject: Re: Feedback – How to turn off my Alerts (KMM92622784V50476L0KM)
Date: April 8, 2007 12:41:35 PM EDT
To: my email address
Reply-To: alerts-feedback@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Hello,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Alerts.
We sincerely apologize for this issue you are having with Yahoo! Alerts.
At this time we would like to reassure you that we are doing everything
in our power to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Although we
can not offer you an estimate as to when this problem will be fixed,
please be assured that we are aware that the problem exists and our
engineers are further investigating the issue. Unfortunately, we cannot
offer any further information regarding the problem
We appreciate your reporting it to us — your input helps us to identify
ways to constantly maintain and improve our service. We are always
striving to keep Yahoo! Alerts the best alert notification service on
the planet!
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Alerts.
Regards,
Jordan
Yahoo! Alerts Customer Care
So they know there is a problem, are basically telling me thanks for telling us about the problem, but that is all we can tell you. Yuck!