Who made Yahoo?

Yahoo or Cingular? Who is to blame for the problem w/ text messaging? What changes should be made?

• After sending a friend 1 SMS message to a Cingular mobile #, my friend has received the same message over 150 times so far! After reading other peoples posts on Yahoo, it seems that this is happening to anyone who used Yahoo IM and sent a message to a Cingular phone #. I think Cingular has credited charges back to some accounts, but not all. Perhaps they are charging back credit based on the account plan (monthly vs prepaid). But after reading some posts on Cingular's forum, it seems to be more finger pointing. (see http://forums.cingular.com/cng/board/message?board.id=messaging&thread.id=14898&view=by_date_ascending&page=1 . I just hung up w/ Cingular's Customer Care and was told that my friend could be issued a credit for any verified billing errors that they are found to be responsible for. I just hope something is done by both Yahoo and Cingular because I am tired of all of the additional charge disclaimers of liabilty that they both have.

• Answer:

  I got all of my charges reversed by Cingular since they looked up my account and no legitimate user would be receiving 50 text messages in a single minute. The messages I received that were not from yahoo came through entirely normally, as in, no duplicates what-so-ever. The only problems I had were with messages routed through yahoo's servers. This suggests it's a Yahoo issue and not a Cingular one. People, insist on refunds! I was assured I would receive 100% of my balance back if this continued to happen (pre-paid service). I have an email in to Yahoo describing this problem and not yet received a reply. Warn everyone you know NOT to use yahoo's sms features until this is resolved, and DO NOT go mobile. Below is the post I left on other questions detailing what happens and how to fix it: Here's what you need to do. Call 1-866-695-2750 and tell them what happened. They pulled up my account and were able to reverse the charges. They did tell me that any messages left out there will still deliver. In my case, I have a prepaid phone and it ran down the entire balance due to the same problem. The woman I spoke to said she was going to open a support ticket and it would be looked into. I've also emailed yahoo about this problem and still waiting to hear a reply. The problem with prepaid accounts is that once your balance runs out, the messages will stop being delivered. Does this mean they're gone for good? Cingular says no, they will still deliver once the excess charges to the account are corrected. Cingular also says that leaving your phone off/sim out of it's slot will only delay the delivery of messages, but the account is still charged for them at the time they hit the message server. If you have prepaid service, the only thing you can do is see if any more messages hit your phone and if they do, call Cingular and have them credit you back the balance that was lost. TURNING OFF THE TEXT MESSAGING FOR THE PHONE IS ONLY EFFECTIVE FOR NEW MESSAGES! If you're a prepaid customer and the balance ran out and stopped message delivery, once your account is credited back the money it lost, these old messages will still deliver. If this happens, call Cingular and they will reverse the new charges to your account. New information: The problem isn't fixed. It's not a cingular issue, or at least not anymore. The messages I recieve from other cell phones don't duplicate, it's only the ones from yahoo messenger. Note that this also is a problem when someone sends you a text/sms message from their yahoo messenger, even if you aren't mobile. Tell all your friends to avoid using ANY of yahoo's text/sms services for the time being. Still awaiting response from support email sent to yahoo