Screaming Penguin

I am officially no happier with Yahoo's profile recovery, or their customer service, but I managed to regain control of my account. Incidentally, my account is 11 years old. I know this, because the original profile zip-code on file for me is from where I lived 11 years ago. I managed to find it by simply using Google Maps to get the zipcode and working backward. Unfortunately, if you fail a couple times, Yahoo locks the account for 12 hours, so it took several days of effort. There is also a bug in their password recovery tool that refused to send an email to my registered alternate email address. Of course, CS was no help on that issue either. Once I got to the challenge-response, screen, however, (without some asshat asking me WHAT MY CHALLENGE QUESTION WAS -- that is retarded) it was all good. I would like to proffer some theories here: 1. Every quarter, have one login that requires you to simply review your profile. Don't add a bunch of crap about your mailing lists, demographics, whatever. Just have people confirm the information they need to use their account, and remind them about it. 2. Customer service should be more helpful than your automated system. If they can't do anything more than the password recovery screen, they are worthless. 3. Your password recovery screen needs to work. 4. If you have a trusted external identity -- for instance, Yahoo's "confirmed" alternate emails -- you should be able to support that external identity. Since Yahoo knows I am kebernet@gmail.com and cooper@screaming-penguin.com, since they have already confirmed those addresses for me, just confirm that I have access to those two email boxes and that should serve as proof of identity. 5. If you have a unified system, make it a damned unified system. Why is it, I can order from a million Yahoo Shops managed merchants over the 11 years since I have created this account and it has never updated my profile information with the stuff I entered into the shopping forms? Moreoever, why can I not confirm my identity with a credit card number I used to make a purchase?