After much deliberation, this week I went ahead and upgraded my Yahoo! email to the premium account. I've used the same email address since practically my first year online, circa 1998. Yahoo! has been good to me - very little in the way of spam gets past the filters I've set up and the ones it automatically generates, and so I didn't feel too bad in investing £11.99 on an annual upgrade.
As the adverts proclaim, that's less than a pound per month, and considering the junk I often buy, money well spent. I now have 2Gb of storage space, no adverts, and an all-round better feel to the application. Already I have spent some time organising my emails properly, sorting them into folders and saving the important ones; I could have done this ages ago but strangely, now that I'm paying for the service and the adverts have gone, I feel more motivated to do so.
It could be that I feel as though I own this email address - it's finally mine, belongs only to me.
However, no subscription is without its disappointments; otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered commenting on Plus. Two things I'm annoyed with. Firstly, the stationery service that comes with the upgraded service only works in IE, and I use Firefox, exclusively. Surely if Blogger can handle inline web applications like this, surely Yahoo! could do so too?
The second problem is with the "free" gift that comes with the subscription: £20 of vouchers for Virgin wine. I don't drink wine, but that's not a problem, it can make for a good gift. What is terribly, terribly disappointing is that the vouchers can only be redeemed when you spend £45 or more! They don't publicise this fact on the advertising! Effectively, I'll never use the vouchers: to me they are worthless, and I would preferred not to have been offered them at all if that was the proviso.
But am I content with my purchase? Overall, yes. I could have continued with the free account, but the adverts were a pain and I was running out of spam filters. I could have changed to a different email supplier; I was kindly given a gmail invitation some time ago. But I have had my Yahoo! email address for so long it's practically etched into my memory, and any attempt to replace it would have proven flawed.
The vouchers are a loss, but I didn't sign up for what they were giving away - I wanted the premium email service, first and foremost. If Yahoo! can fix the problem they seem to be having with non-IE browsers, then I'll be much happier. I've a funny feeling that in the coming months and years, Yahoo! will invest in the premium services they offer (including email - and I expect to see wider integration with the other Yahoo! services), and I will be ready to benefit when they do.
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