Yahoo! Glithc Costs Advertiser $42,000
A thread at Webmaster's World claims that a glitch on Yahoo!'s end has cost one advertiser $41,000 more than they were supposed to pay. As the thread says:
My client spends over $30,000 per year with yahoo with great results in her pay-per-click campaigns.
This last billing cycle, however, Yahoo had a 'glitch' yesterday, and instead of charging my clients' card $1000 one time to refill her account, they charged her card 42 times. 42 times! That's $42,000.
So My client called Yahoo, they admitted the glitch and other people were affected too, however they refuse to immediately clear the charge, credit my client's card, and remedy the situation. My client has to wait 10 full business days before the $42,000 is cleared off her credit card. Now, she doesn't have any money on her card to order products from her vendors that customers already placed.
Subsequently, Search Engine Round Table followed up on the story and reported how Yahoo! was being very upfront about the glitch. Posting an e-mail from YahooSarah, the official Yahoo! Search Marketing Representative, the Search Engine Round Table post reads:
Yahoo! experienced a technical issue that caused the credit cards of a few advertisers to be charged incorrectly on Wednesday, February 14. Some credit cards were authorized for one or more charges in error.
We caught this early and were able to halt the process before the charges were actually completed. We’re very sorry for any issues this might have caused you and we're doing everything possible to completely resolve the situation as quickly as possible, and to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Please keep in mind that during a credit card transaction such as this, an "authorization hold" is placed against the card (similar to when you check into a hotel, and a hold is placed against your card for potential incidental charges). These authorization holds will automatically be removed from your credit card account, usually within three to seven business days. If you are finding that the authorization hold is causing you inconvenience in any way, we encourage you to contact us at 866-YAHOO-SM (866-924-6676), and we will be happy to assist you in contacting your credit card's issuing bank to manually remove the authorization (that said, a bank may take as long as 48 hours to completely remove the authorizations).
Thanks
YahooSarah
Although Yahoo! has been upfront about the issue, this does not effect the validity of the initial complaints that "Now, she doesn't have any money on her card to order products from her vendors that customers already placed." It would be interesting to know what action Yahoo! has taken if the initial victim of this glitch has bothered to contact them.
