I submitted to Yahoo! paying the $300 and the editor comes back with "not enough original content" line and denied a listing.. he says ?your site is just full of off site links?.. so I write back WTF is Yahoo? a site full of off-site links.. he still says no so I ask for a refund and get the "no guarantee line"

When the bill comes I call my card company to dispute the bill and they not only reversed the charge but added a $20 charge back fee to Yahoo!

I just got a real nasty email from Yahoo! Legal saying this and that about theft of services and other BS.

Is someone going to come and break my legs?
What a racket!

I have no idea if they will push this, but I am amazed you wouuld try to rip them off then complain about it here.

Based on the feedback you got, it is obvious that they have reviewed your site, so they have done exactly what they said they would do.

The listing in their directory is a value added extra based on their review.

You have no right to a refund and I hope they sting you with a massive legal bill to cover the time you are wasting.

At now point in the submission process do they make a promise your site will get listed. They also don't offer your money back if it gets rejected.

In my experience 99.9% of sites rejected by Yahoo are done so for VERY good reason. Their requirements are so minimal (unique content, no site errors, etc.) that if your site does not make it in, it must be of little or no value of web surfers.

Yahoo may claim their money back. You have no choice on that and no legal leg to stand on.

If you don't settle this within a few days, you may end up with a bad credit rating.

Otherwise next time you try to get a loan to buy a car or house, or try to apply for a new bank account or credit card, you may get rejected and there is little you can do about this.

Your only real choice is to send your cheque to Yahoo with an apology for $319 to cover the review fee plus chargeback fee.

On a chargeback the credit card company usually keeps your money until a settlement is made.

You also clicked on the box agreeing to the terms and conditions. which include the lines:

"The current fee for Yahoo! Express , is a one-time NON-REFUNDABLE fee of US$299.00 for each web site submitted "

and

"You acknowledge that the payment of this fee is for consideration of your site AND DOES NOT IN ANY WAY GUARANTEE THAT YOUR SITE WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE DIRECTORY. Your payment only guarantees that Yahoo! will consider and respond to your request within seven business days, by either accepting or not accepting your site. You expressly agree to pay to Yahoo! such fee whether or not your site is accepted or denied inclusion in the Directory. "

After the initial rejection, you should have taken the opportunity to add a significant amount of content to the site, in addition to your affiliate links. You could then have appealed the decision, asking the editor to take a second look at the site, making it clear that the site was now much more content oriented than before. A missed opporunity ;-(

You won't get your $299 back but you DID STILL have a chance to get listed...even after the initial rejection...

Do you have a copy of the letter they sent? I'd be interested to see how they justify that. You did agree to their terms, but certain credit card companies have diferent policies regarding online transactions. Can you post what you got from them?

Unfortunately in this case, things may have gone too far but for others whose site is rejected, get cracking and fix the problem, then appeal (within the 30 day limit).

i guess it is a learning experience for everyone. It seems that people here are webmasters and or search engine optimizers looking to enhance their personal/business sites or those of their clients. this is not a place to celebrate fraud!

Beware the credit card chargebacks - this is one reason why people selling on Ebay are wary of people paying with Paypal - the buyers pay, and when the seller sends the item, the buyer charges back their credit card.

A lot of you may argue this, but i have studied law and while yahoo legally has a case against thewebdude, it would be more expensive for them to attempt to retrieve the $300 than it's actually worth.

Other than that, thewebdude has a case against yahoo, or he would have a case if a class action law-suit was brought up. It would obviously not be worthwhile to take them on himself.

Yahoo may argue that he agreed to thier terms, but one could countersue, claiming that yahoo is using what is a huge market share of the internet market and traffic to force website owners to agree to a draconian contract.

It could be further argued that this draconian contract has to be agreed upon, since not submitting to yahoo which is arguably the most used search engine portal constitutes a huge loss of revenue, and possibly bankrupcy for anyone operating an ecommerce business.

If i submit an ad to my local yellow pages, i dont pay if they have a problem with my ad, either that or we reach a compromise.

If i sign a contract stating that my insurance company can withdraw $500 a month from my bank account, for car insurance, i obviously wont pay for the last 2 months of the year, if i dont use the car anymore.

Therefore why should i have to pay if the service from yahoo isn't performed?

Yahoo would receive many more submissions, and be legally responsible internationally speaking, if the conditions were revised with the following stipulation (or a variation thereof)

Review fee: $60 (non-refundable)
Listing fee: $220

I'm thinking about spending the $299 to be considered, but I'm curious about how much original content I need to come up with to make the Yahoo editors happy.

Just how much do you mean when you say you have "some good content"?

This is at webdudes cost.

Yahoo's terms are clearly stated. Yahoo offer free submission via Google and this can be a legal point.

Google may decide to ban him next. They could - after all Yahoo will not want him appearing on any of their search results - even the Google ones. Will they filter him out or ask Google to ban him? Who knows?

If the amount has been taken OFF webdude credit card, it will be put BACK ON when they speak to Yahoo. The credit card company WILL charge webdude. Thay may charge interest, they may charge a false charge-back fee.

Once again, he has no legal leg to stand on. He paid for a review - he got a review. If he wanted to be listed WITHOUT a review, he should submit to Google. That is free. That is the legal point that Yahoo will use.

A small claims court should not cost too much. It was £10 here in the UK about a year ago. (That's less than $15). If yahoo win, webdude will pay the costs.

Your service was performed by YH, the service is the Review and ONLY the Review, the listing is not in any way named as the service provided for the payment.

And what of it, when someone makes a search from the yahoo website, the yahoo results are presented first. Unless someone has a decent amount of knowledge concerning search engines or the net in general, they may be unable to find the google results. The average user is not that fluent.

Mommy Jane who comes online and looks up toaster at yahoo is not going to know how to view the google results. If this website operator cant list his website under toaster using yahoo, then his website cannot be found, and he will lose considerable income from this.

Google is not part of yahoo, it's a 3rd party search engine that provides back fill.

When someone provides $300 to a pay per click search engine, if the website is rejected, the money doesn'r automatically dissapear. The website can be submitted as many times, or alternate sites can be submitted, and one can communicate with a goto reviewer.

Maybe this is because goto knows that to have repeat business you have to treat a customer with respect? Or maybe it's common sense.

Either way, legal or not. Yahoo would generate far more money if a website owner didn't have to fear throwing $300 out the window.

And yes Yahoo has the right to refuse a website full of links? But Yahoo should also be equal to all website owners.

As i've stated in another post, under some categories there are so many doorway pages, that one has to wonder how many employees are earning a secondary income from undisclosed sources.

If i have 12 quality website, and 1 out of 3 gets rejected, since it's not 'original content' then yahoo may have made a free $300, but they lost $2700 since i wouldn't be submitting the rest of my websites.

There is a reason yahoo is losing money.

Then YOU would KNOW which sites you can submit and be listed.

As I say I haven't read Yahoo closely enough. Goto do not list their reasons for rejection. It is simply a case that Yahoo is running with his money, however, he did have 30 days to correct the site. They do provide helpful information pinpointing why it was not listed. It is up to us as users to force the issue with the search engines to put up a list of rejection reasons.

For instance, they may refuse to list any pyramid schemes. But you would never knbow unless you paid $300 to submit. The website owner should be shown all the listing guidlines before they part with their money.

I got rejected at Goto for a back button problem. I fixed it and then was listed. This is what webdude SHOULD have done. It merely could have including a product reveiw from each affiliate store. That is content. It is also expandable and he could get more sales from it, plus be listed in Yahoo.