As a would-be Internet entrepreneur, I was hypnotized by the well advertised idea that if you get your web site listed with Yahoo.com (the Holy Grail of listings) then you can expect a huge increase in traffic.

They recently require that commercial sites pay a $300 fee. Not for a guaranteed listing, but only for an appraisal. There are no refunds - ever.
If you do get listed there is no guarantee that you will get a high position in your category.

I went to a lot of trouble to make my site "Yahoo compatible." 

They made me jump through hoops before taking my money. You have to check off a long list of legal points - twice!  If you go back to check something, your whole submission is deleted and you have to start again from scratch.

The US $300 fee is no paltry sum to me.
To an Aussie like me that's the same as $600 to an American. Just imagine how much that is to some would-be entrepreneur in say Indonesia - that could be a months wages!

They rejected my web site because they "could not reach it."  Even I,  with a 56k modem and a copper phone line can always connect reliably to my site, hosted in Canada, in under 5 seconds.

Daily, hoards of hopeful souls like myself are drifting down the road of sacrifice to pay monetary homage to this Demi-God. I believe at around 30,000 per day! Do the math!

They force the consumer to basically forego all rights of dispute and any chance of a refund on the pretence that they might give you a listing.

$300  for some desk jockey to look at your site for 1 minute, (or not look at it - in my case) and reject it out of hand.  A fair practice would be to ask a $25 fee on application and the balance if OK to be listed.

The consumer is led to believe that they have a chance of being listed in the Yahoo directory when in fact the chances of getting a listing that will be of any benefit, are quite small.

I can't understand why Yahoo is so popular anyway.
The search results are slow and lousy to say the least.

I see it as a violation of consumer rights.
I find the business practices of Yahoo to be unethical and immoral.
I'm sure they must be violating some American Business Law.

I will go somewhere else to spend my advertising dollars. 
All Internet entrepreneurs should be made aware of this scam.

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Dr John Flynn publishes a monthly HTML ezine called:
"The Xerostar Times" and his motto is:
"caring for creative people"
You can subscribe at: 
http://www.xerotron.com/cgi-bin/mail/mail.cgi
The free eBook "The Xerotron Story" is available at:
http://midi-ebooks.com  mailto: xerostar@iinet.net.au

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