In early 2004 I added a few of our sites to the Yahoo Directory, paying around $200 per listing if I remember correctly. To do this I created a Yahoo email account, which I didn’t really use for anything else. 

So around a year later, the listings were due for renewal. As I hadn’t checked the Yahoo email account (or the backup) the renewal dates passed me by. The credit card on account was no longer valid, so no payment was taken. About 2 months after this I actually remembered that these payments were overdue. I contacted Yahoo billing department, to update my credit card details and hopefully make the payments belatedly.

After a few emails back and forth it became clear it wasn’t going to be that easy. Apparently I had to start the process from the beginning and resubmit all the listings, with no guarantee they’d be accepted. By this point I’d had enough and decided it wasn’t worth the bother, expecting the listings would be duly removed.

It’s now nearly two years later and all our listings are still there, whether they’re doing us any good or not is another matter, and with no sign of them being removed in the near future. There are even sites in our categories which no longer exist and haven’t for a while, so I’m guessing Yahoo aren’t getting any subscriptions for these either.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who has lapsed payment on their listings, and for how long.

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