Here is an account of my recent experience with Yahoo Domains. I don't know what made them change their mind, but I was pretty surprised & glad that they did. I will tell you exactly what happened...
A little over a year ago, I purchased 7 domains through their Yahoo Domains website. A couple of months before the domains were to be renewed, I started transferring them to another registrar, because yahoo is very limited when it comes to options for your domains. The transfers took about a week on average, but they went through just fine. After I transferred the first couple of names, I was surprised to see the domains still listed at Yahoo Domains, but I didn't think anything of it, and figured they would disappear from their site after a bit.
Of course, I now know that they require you to go into their site and cancel their services, even if you have transferred the names elsewhere (this is ridiculous). I thought everything was fine until I got charges for 6 domain renewals on my Credit Card Statement. At first, I didn't know what the charges were for, so I sent an e-mail to Yahoo Domains' support, explaining the situation. I didn't hear back from them, so I called them the same day. When I found out that they were trying to charge me for the domain renewals, I was really upset with them. The lady I spoke with didn't speak English very well, but after I requested to speak to a manager, she did come back on the line and say that they were issuing a credit for those charges.
Well, a week went by, and I didn't see a credit from Yahoo Domains, so I called them again. This time, I spoke with someone who knew exactly what was going on, and she informed me that under no circumstances did Yahoo Domains give refunds for this type of situation. I expressed how upset I was to her, but didn't expect to get my money back at that point. I did tell her that Yahoo operating in this fashion was not worth the bad publicity that they were going to receive.
To my surprise, about a week later, I received an email saying that just this one time, Yahoo Domains would refund my charges. I did get the refund of all charges promptly. I think there were two things that may have helped me...
1) I really believe they responded to my e-mail more favorably than my phone call. I'm not sure why.
2) They may have taken my threat of bad publicity seriously.
Yahoo Domains does provide some cheap services, but I will probably think twice before I order anything from them again.
