{"id":2380,"date":"2007-11-05T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T12:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/2007\/11\/05\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/"},"modified":"2021-03-29T02:27:25","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T06:27:25","slug":"yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo Web Hosting Supplier Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I kicked of the supplier size case study series with a post about a negative experience with a large supplier, Dell<\/a>. This morning, I\u2019ll continue the series with a horror story about another large supplier: Yahoo Web Hosting.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here!<\/a><\/p>\n

For those of you \u201ctuning in\u201d for the first time, this series is designed to share real-life experiences related to hypotheses that I am testing regarding how supplier size <\/a>needs to be factored into sourcing and supplier management approaches.<\/p>\n

So here goes the Yahoo Web Hosting case study.<\/p>\n

Back in 2002, the tech markets were crashing. Dot-coms were going out of business left and right. And Web hosting vendors were no exception.<\/p>\n

At the time, Next Level Purchasing had been using a Web hosting vendor called Hypermart. They really had a great service.<\/p>\n

But when financial times got tough, they sold out to Endurance International \u2013 a holding company that was gobbling up Web hosting providers. And, after this acquisition, things got bad. They offshored all of their customer facing functions and the new people couldn\u2019t get anything right. It was an unqualified disaster.<\/p>\n

So in those times, the #1 priority for supplier selection in the Web hosting category was financial stability. Because they were a publicly-held and profitable company, we selected Yahoo for our Web hosting to replace Hypermart.<\/p>\n

All in all, we were very happy with our relationship with Yahoo Web Hosting for the next few years. The only problem we had was related to our site\u2019s capability of sending email via the various forms we used on our site \u2013 you know, when you fill out one of those \u201cContact Us\u201d forms and hit \u201csubmit\u201d and it sends an email to the company?<\/p>\n

Well, every six months or so, that capability \u2013 referred to as \u201csendmail\u201d functionality \u2013 would malfunction. When we reported it to Yahoo\u2019s tech support, it was usually fixed within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

Now that problem was a pain. We depend a lot on the sendmail functionality for things like sending automatically-generated usernames and passwords, getting questions from our students, and even receiving notifications that a new student has enrolled and must be set up in our system.<\/p>\n

But one 24-hour outage every six months was tolerable given that we knew the supplier wasn\u2019t going to go belly up without notice.<\/p>\n

However, in March of this year, things got really bad.<\/p>\n

The sendmail functionality went down five times in a six-week period. The outages were lasting several days. Sure, we had a backup plan, but backup plans are backup plans because they are not as good as primary plans.<\/p>\n

But not only was Yahoo Web Hosting\u2019s quality a mess, but their service was even worse. I called tech support and the people who answered the phones didn\u2019t have responsibility for these types of issues.<\/p>\n

And, not only that, but they wouldn\u2019t forward us to the people who had responsibility, nor would they personally speak with someone that had responsibility. Their process was simply to enter the problem in their system and wash their hands of the matter.<\/p>\n

Escalations to supervisors produced the same response: \u201cwe can\u2019t do anything other than enter it into our system and let Engineering handle it.\u201d And the estimated resolution time was 3-5 business days. No chance for expediting. No chance to speak with anyone who could control the outcome. No empathy for the customer.<\/p>\n

I explained to them that the problem had caused us to lose about $22,000 in revenue from the previous month. They didn\u2019t care. The process was the process. There was no personal responsibility. No ownership of the problem. Not the slightest recognition of the pain of the customer. No above-and-beyond mentality from Yahoo Web Hosting whatsoever.<\/p>\n

I even went as far as trying to record our telephone conversations for this case study but, as soon as I told them I was recording the call (notification is required by law), they would hang up. Funny how they can require that the call would be recorded, but weren\u2019t willing to be held accountable themselves.<\/p>\n

Anyway, when a supplier doesn\u2019t care that you lose $22,000 in revenue, it\u2019s obviously time to switch suppliers. So that\u2019s what we did.<\/p>\n

After five years of reliable business, Yahoo Web Hosting turned its back on us when we needed them the most. So we tossed them to the scrap heap of former suppliers.<\/p>\n

Hmmm\u2026so far that\u2019s two case studies of two large suppliers. Does that mean that small and mid-sized companies should avoid large suppliers? Does that mean that small suppliers are best?<\/p>\n

Be patient. There is still a lot to explore in the coming case studies and many lessons to draw from these experiments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I kicked of the supplier size case study series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\nYahoo Web Hosting Supplier Case Study - Next Level Purchasing Association (NLPA)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yahoo Web Hosting Supplier Case Study - Next Level Purchasing Association (NLPA)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well, I kicked of the supplier size case study series […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Next Level Purchasing Association (NLPA)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NextLevelPurchasing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-11-05T12:47:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-03-29T06:27:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/11\/nlpa-images-021.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1067\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Galo Matagay\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@nextlevelpurch\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@nextlevelpurch\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Galo Matagay\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Galo Matagay\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/#\/schema\/person\/72d094fab77892483dfa6e061cb27eaa\"},\"headline\":\"Yahoo Web Hosting Supplier Case Study\",\"datePublished\":\"2007-11-05T12:47:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-03-29T06:27:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/\"},\"wordCount\":805,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Procurement\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/yahoo-web-hosting-supplier-case-study\/\",\"name\":\"Yahoo Web Hosting Supplier Case Study - 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