Meet Aabaco Small Business (the Reincarnation of Yahoo Directory)


Aabaco Small Business

The Yahoo Small Business Directory is no more. It’s now part of Aabaco Small Business.

Aabaco — whatever that means — is a company owned (for now) by Yahoo and attempts to reach the Yahoo Small Business Directory now direct users to the Aabaco site.

Before Google was a household name, many people found their way around the Web by way of the Yahoo Directory. The Directory was not a search engine, rather an organized list of websites selected by Yahoo.

Websites were sorted by topics such as education, shopping, and resources. You could click the topic you were interested in and see a list of websites under that topic which Yahoo had curated.

But some found the system convoluted and confusing. What’s more, directories began to get a bad rap as spammy link sellers. That wasn’t a good reputation for Yahoo.

The decision to retire the Yahoo Directory was announced with little fanfare by the company. Yahoo simply gave a short paragraph at the end of an already short 2014 progress report explaining its decision by stating, “Yahoo was started nearly 20 years ago as a directory of websites that helped users explore the Internet. While we are still committed to connecting users with the information they’re passionate about, our business has evolved and at the end of 2014 (December 31), we will retire the Yahoo Directory.”

So it’s not really much of an explanation. But perhaps Yahoo did not feel the need to spell out the reason behind its actions with directories so little in use these days.

Yahoo has been making a number of changes in recent years, a transformation that is coming to pass under the leadership of ex-Googler Marissa Mayer. As for the Yahoo Directory, it is no more. Instead of transitioning the service into a new form, it seems the company has killed it completely in favor of a new service all together.

The question is now, what exactly is Aabaco Small Business?

In short, Aabaco Small Business is a service that offers small business owners custom websites, hosting, domains, eCommerce help, and business email plans. So, instead of helping you find businesses on the Web, Aabaco helps you get your small business on it.

For now, Aabaco Small Business is a Yahoo business, but this will not always be the case. Though no specific date was given, Aabaco explained on its website that they will be spun off from Yahoo to become a part of Aabaco Holdings. You can go to the company’s Questions and Answers page to learn more.

Image: Aabaco Small Business

115 Comments ▼

Tabby McFarland Tabby McFarland is a staff writer and web researcher for Small Business Trends. As a staff writer she specializes in social media, technology, special interest features, and e-commerce. A geek at heart, Tabby loves to be online interacting with the blogging community. Tabby is a WAHM (work at home mom) and is also an avid Pinterest enthusiast with a strong sense of style and creativity.

115 Reactions
  1. What’s the deal with the new name? I think it is better affiliated with Yahoo – which is a better known brand.

    • I’m not sure this is even a company. I just got a call from 1-229-384-5021. The man I spoke with said it was not a sales call and that he was with aabaco software. I advised him to get an honest job, hung up, and called the number back. What I got was a recorded message saying the number I had dialed could not be completed. What sort of business calls from an invalid phone number? He said he was located in Georgia but sounded like he was from Calcutta. Scams are set up all the time from people overseas illegally using a US number.

  2. This is the most unorganized, unethical company I have ever dealt with. The owner of my company tried to verify everything on his account while I was on the phone with him 3 way and they asked for everything but his blood type. The last verification was for the credit card on the account, not just the last four digits but the full 16. We don’t know these people and when you have a business that has several cc’s he didn’t have all of them. So the verification process was stopped there. They would not help him or I with anything from that point forward. I understand privacy, and safety of our account but seriously?? social, birthdate, phone number, email etc. and that was not enough information for verification even the pin #???? Yeah, we have been waiting 8 days for this company to get what we need done, done…. and our site has been down that long. IF anyone knows about SEO’s yeah that is going down also because of this shoddy, illiterate, and ridiculous company. OH and you cannot go around them to get your internet issues solved until they do their part. so yeah no recommendations from here.

    • Same problems here! I hung up on Rahul in India because of the ridiculous amount of information he wanted in order to send out the “reset your password” email which was NOT being generated by the website software after countless attempts. NOTHING works, NOTHING is as described in their instructions, and I cannot access, copy or save the files from my website. I am ready to scream. I hate everything about this company. I have hired a new host but cannot copy and edit my files in order to prepare them for the transition!!

      • Also I cannot find a way to LOG OUT of anything that I open with their links or software. Everything is left wide open for invasion.

      • Same happened to me. I gave them my email address, backup email address, name phone number, last 4 digits of the cc # but they wanted the first 6 and last four. I told them I’m not giving it to them because the middle digits simply are call numbers for the credit card type which means, if I give them the first 6 and last 4, they can hack my account. Needless to say, I can’t use my domain name that I paid for and thus I have to rename and brand my business. Think I’m going to file a lawsuit over this. This just demolished my company and the efforts that I put forth.

      • Craig please let me know if you do file a lawsuit. The same happened to me exactly and I am devastated. The only way seems to be through a lawsuit. No doubt a class-action suit.

      • The absolute worse. The same thing happened to me and they also refuse to give me a refund after I wasn’t able to use ANY of the services i paid for due to glitches on their behalf. I literally couldn’t do anything, not even look at my control panel. I threatened to contact my legal team and all of the sudden i get an email saying my issue now needs “special handling” and they will contact me in the next 24 hours.

      • Horrible Customer service. I was told I would get a refund if the service was canceled within 30 days. I called back in 10 days to get a refund and Aabaco said they did not show any record of charging the $95.88 to my credit card. Their response was to mail a copy of my credit card statement. I could not fax, or email a copy, I had to snail mail a copy. Interesting since they are an internet based company. I have a feeling the $95.88 will be lost forever. If you are considering doing business with this company, please dont. There are numerous companies that are great at web hosting and have favorable customer service.

    • Agree. Extremely unethical company. They tried to force me to purchase hosting and email with them in order to renew my domain. I am absolutely furious with them.

      Move your accounts elsewhere ASAP.

    • Facing same problem.

      Most unethical company. Cheaters!!

      I have paid 5 years in advance when it was named Yahoo. Now they have suspended my account and since last 1 month I am trying to contact their team for support. There is no human available to listen. They have stupid and nonsense online support system where you keep on logging your complaints and you get zero support.

      I would never ever recommend anyone to use any services from this fraud company. My business has ruined because of their third class support system.. They can’t face their customers so they have ran from India….

      Truly the world company I have ever seen.

    • I’ve had similar problems as everyone else listed – completely unresponsive customer service phone line, I was given incorrect information, told my domain name was renewed though it wasn’t. I couldn’t access my site and it was down for over a week, then after telling the Aabaco folks in India that I was canceling, my credit card was charged. They won’t refund it. Now, 5 phone calls and 7 months later they have finally said they would cancel service. Still won’t refund a penny,
      Who’s in for a class action lawsuit?

    • JOHN ISH ISHMAEL

      Thus Aabaco sleaze is run by Alibaba and the 40 you know what.
      I have had my site hosted by Yahoo for about 20 years. Now, some yahoos in India advise me that to use the old Sitebuilder templates I have to “upgrade” my plan…that is, almost double my payment.
      Their Help needs a shit in their neither regions. Now I seek a reliable host (Godaddy is slippery with pricing). Avoid Aabaco or Alibaba.

    • I AM IN IF ANYONE WANTS TO START A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT!
      WHY?
      ILLEGAL BILLING PRACTICES, DECEPTIVE BILLING PRACTICES, CHANGING BILLING PRACTICES WITHOUT NOTIFICATION THAT IS REQUIRED PER THEIR SERVICE AGREEMENT, FRAUD…WHAT ELSE CAN YOU ADD?

  3. Change is not for the better.. My business email no longer works, the Aabaco help number I was sent doesn’t work, I emailed the Aabaco help centre 3 days ago with an incident number and still no reply. Its pathetic service.

    I hope my business customers that I need to contact and send info are as patient as Aabaco expect me to be…

  4. This “company” is absolutely horrible. My business email no longer works no matter what I try as an access point. You can’t get help unless you have an Abaco account. The instructions are so convoluted it is absolutely ridiculous. There is no contact available whatsoever for help. This is the ultimate doom loop. Thanks a lot Yahoo for doing this. How do we even know this is legit? I found information that this company is out of India. With no assistance available I feel like this is some kind of scam because the certificates are not reliable from this site.

  5. I was told by this company to buy a new computer with window 7, I spent $780.00for computer and uses 4 others and unable to access my website and when I call the techs hang up on me after troubleshooting for 30to40 mins.This is the most dispicable service and company I have ever dealth with and still unable to make adjustmentto my website.

  6. This company is worst I have ever dealth with ! Since the migration I am unable to access my website to make changes. The techs told me to buy a new computorbecause win.10 is not compatible, I did and I am still unable to make changes. They state a new version is available for it to work, I have used five computers and the download they say is 2.9 will not download only version 2.8.9 downloaded on 5 computers. Now the techs start hanging up on me. WHAT CAN I DO ?

    • They tried to bill me a month ahead of time….but my card
      Exp. needed to be updated….so they cut me off a month
      before my paid service period ended…along with my email…
      ..best advice…RUN FROM THESE PEOPLE….
      I found a great place for a website….EHOST
      cost? for a 3 year subscription….$2 a month! with everything
      that Yahoo offered…. I won in the end !

  7. Ever since Yahoo moved my account to Aabaco, they have merged both accounts (my personal account with my business email). Now I receive emails on both accounts and if try to delete from one account, it deletes from the other as well.

    I spoke to someone Gobin with Incident Number 00069862. This person needed my Credit Card information to solve the problem. I refused to provide this personal information to a person sitting in India, as it has no relevance to my problem.

    Aabaco seems to be a big joke to yahoo customers.

  8. How do I cut my previous website service from Yahoo Small Business if the new site cannot be accessed? I want to get out of Aabaco. NOW!

    • For over 3 weeks as Access Manager I can not get into Web Hosting. I’ve discussed this with a number of Tech. to which is hard to understand, more or less repeat their name. I’ve got a case number and was told I’d get a response within
      24 to 48 hrs. That was 3 weeks ago and numerous calls, case # without any response.

      What action does one take to transfer their domain to another company, who can I contact, a honest American Company.

  9. These people are an embarrassment. After being cut off from my storefront with no recourse for five days during this transition process, I was sent into an infinite loop today when I logged in. You know what the customer service rep told me? She couldn’t bring up my website and that was the problem What does that have to do with being able to log in to Aabaco?? She was clearly trying to sell me additional business services. Then she decided to ask ten or so security questions, telling me that the phone number my business has had for twenty years was not on file, implying that she wouldn’t provide customer support. What a bunch of slimeballs. Turns out that the bug is that you now have to log in repeatedly before they give you access to your storefront. Getting out of this as soon as possible. Ridiculously inconvenient. We were with Yahoo for more than ten years.

  10. My site has been going on and off line since 7:00 pm. I was on the phone with them for 2.5 hours, they gave me a run around about having the origonal credit card. In the old days Yahoo was a great web host and they had some great deals, I paid for 5 years of web hosting in advance. The credit card I gave them was expired and discarded long ago. They kept telling me they couldn’t talk to me or fix my website hosting unless the account was verified, most host do this by sending an email you then click a link and that is your verification.
    Yahoo which owns Aabaco is just making sure you keep a credit card on file it has nothing to do with security. They allowed me to add a new credit card, this can only be done on Windows, it won’t work with Mac. After going through all this, they did agree I owned the account but claimed they couldn’t access the system because the server was down and websites hosted by yahoo were down. I also own catsitterservice.com lorithedogwalkernewportbeach.com and lorithedogwalkerandcatsitter.com these 3 websites hosted by Yahoo now using the name Aabaco were up so what he said did not make sense. I asked him about this and he said he would call me back in an hour……. of course there was no return call.
    I believe that Yahoo sold more of the 5 year hosting plans than they would like to service so the way to get out of their obligation is sell to a company which they own and fail to provide the service that was paid for until the users find new host and give up the money they spent. When a class action law suit is filed against Yahoo I would like to be included.

  11. Abaci is owned by Yahoo, Google it.

  12. I am trying to report them to the BBB and can’t find the entity, or a real address. I called several times to talk about billing, and some tech issues I was having. Each time it said the wait was 20 mins, and after 35-40 mins I had to hang up. Finally I had a slot of time to sit on hold and did so for over an hour (it still gave the 20 min estimate).
    Once I finally reached a real person, he was unable to help me because they weren’t able to adjust the plan or make changes for two or three more days. He was asking me to call back, and I asked him to put me on with a supervisor. The CSR explained that they didn’t have anyone there at that time, and he would put in a request for a call back. It has been three days and I haven’t heard from anyone at all. I am done sitting on hold. I want action.

    Does anyone have any further information? I wasn’t expecting this to go smoothly, but this is horrible customer service, and none of my questions/issues have been resolved. I can’t wait on hold for an hour again, especially if they can’t help. What are our rights?

  13. This company is not for bussiness. The new model requires to have a yahoo account to access the emails of your domain and there is no way to change the access of your email account so if one employe leaves the company, there ir no way to retrieve their emails. !!!! You loose everithing. No sopport ! Terreible Bad Service . Stay away of this service

  14. I have been on the phone for over 40 mins w/awful music in my ear from your co., and you just dropped the call!!! I can not create a new user id with your co as it keeps saying it has sent me an email to my “old” yahoo acct I can’t get into! HELPPPPPPPP!!!!!!! for god sakes answer your phone and dont drop calls for god sakes HELPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!

  15. HELP hellp help help yoiu kept me on the phone listening to terrible music for over 40 mins tho you said it would be 20 and then dropped me w/no human help i can not get into my website as I have to create new id and it keeps saying it has sent me an email icant get to in my “old” yahoo account HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP for God sakes get it together and help me.

  16. We have been with Yahoo since 2001 and now will be getting off ASAP – no answer at AABACO, site down on and off – no indication of when they will ever help – same as above. I recommend SITEGROUND.com – they respond within 5 minutes online or on the phone and usually fix the problem in that time.
    So sad…about Yahoo :(.

  17. I have been trying for week to get these people to help me. The wait times on the phone are ridiculous … no one knows anything … tech support is a joke, and I just want my money back. But there is no human being to talk to, other than inept service people who can’t even do the simplest thing, yet keep you on the phone for hours. Aabaco is a bunch of thieving bastards, and I wish I hadn’t paid Yahoo (who actually could handle Web hosting) before the switchover to these inept pricks.

  18. Aabaco Small Business is a subscription scam run by Yahoo. The way it works is that once you sign up, there is no way to terminate service. I tried reaching them by phone to cancel, calling three different phone numbers that I was given, with the same endless hold times – no one ever picked up. I then went to the FCC home page and filed a complaint – should have been the FTC, but it did get their attention. I next found Aabaco’s on-line tech support form and sent in ten copies of my FCC complaint, alleging a subscription scam. Getting nowhere, I finally had to drive to Yahoo HQ, in Sunnyvale, CA. Fortunately I live in the SF Bay Area. I filled out a form at the guard shack, and while I was driving home, was called by reps from both Aabaco, and Yahoo, and problem solved. What a horrible company. They should be shut down immediately. Now I am reading stories about Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO, about to lose her job, and now I know why Aabaco is such a hideous failure.

  19. I am trying to access my website to update it and I have not be able. I need to register with Aabaco which asks way too many personal questions. This is intolerable and a bad business move. How do we get out of contracts and what happens to our domain names??

  20. I think it’s WRONG to ask for the full credit card number just to verify information. I refused to give out the full number and told them we will have to find. They need to come up with a solution to this. Too many credit card fraud cases now and if there is an online source for us to enter that info then why does the customer service rep need my full cc information????? I am going to cancel this service and find another provider!

    • They are going to hold your domain ransom. Without giving your cc#, you can’t get the Authorization code to move your domain to another service. Your domain is now useless. Happened to me because I refuse to give someone from India my cc#. Now I have to rebrand my company. This is devastating to a business and I don’t see how it’s legal.

  21. HORRIBLE!!! STAY AWAY!!! They will lie their asses off to get you off their backs instead of providing solutions. Spent 3 hours with them on the phone just now. They deactivated my site by mistake and all they had to say was “oops!”. Now I can’t even get the site back up because their system is undergoing maintenance for 3 DAYS!! Yahoo dropped the ball big time!!! Newsflash, I don’t need to deal with Yahoo. Melbourne owns all of the domains on eartch. I contacted them, they provided quality support and had my domain name redirected back to them and voila! Problem solved. Goodbye Yahoo/Aabaco!!

  22. None of the links they have sent me work and I cannot access my account! Can someone give me a PHONE NUMBER to call these idiots? Thank you, I can see I’m not alone in the MESS.

  23. Update: I have contacted BBB but am using Yahoo! as there isn’t a way to report Aabaco since they aren’t listed anywhere yet (no contact info/address to their business). I encourage the rest of you to do so.

    If you notice, Aabaco actually offers us a larger discount on plans. So if you actually can get to them and they are able to (they couldn’t help me when I called and asked me to call back), you may save a lot of money. Once it it taken care of, hopefully they will provide a better service than we have seen in the last few weeks.

    If you do nothing, you are actually paying more to this company than their own pricing structure.

    • They are going to hold your domain ransom. Without giving your cc#, you can’t get the Authorization code to move your domain to another service. Your domain is now useless. Happened to me because I refuse to give someone from India my cc#. Now I have to rebrand my company. This is devastating to a business and I don’t see how it’s legal.

  24. My website is down now since Dec.2. Activated account through Aabaco and paid my web hosting fee. They said site will be up in 5 hrs. It’s been 10 days. Trying to find somewhere else to move my web site.

  25. This is the process for canceling your yahoo website
    Step 1

    Visit the Yahoo Small Business website and sign in to your control panel (see Resources). To sign in, click the blue “Already a customer? Sign in” option, on the top toolbar. Enter your Yahoo ID and password into the corresponding fields. Click the yellow “Sign In” button.

    Step 2

    Click the “Cancel Plan” link under the account you wish to cancel.

    Related Reading: How Can I Disconnect My Yahoo Account That Was Linked to Facebook?

    Step 3

    Confirm the cancellation of your hosting account. To confirm the cancellation, follow the on-screen directions. The Yahoo website will guide you through the process of cancelling your account

  26. No, Joyce, that doesn’t work. We cancelled our small business account online, were billed again in November. November 9th called Yahoo and cancelled again. Got pop-up on my email screen that I was no longer a small business member. Great, right? No. Another charge from them AFTER cancelling in November. Called number next to “Yahoo” on cc bill, and got some Indian guy I could barely understand who said that the alternate email address I had provided didn’t match their records (as I stared right at it on my screen) so he needed my cc number and he needed me to migrate my account to Aabco in order to cancel it. He was rude and dodged all of my questions as to why I would need to do this, just kept repeating that he needed the cc number to verify my identity. I’m calling BS on this company and on Yahoo. I would very much like to know why an account that was cancelled before they transitioned landed in the lap of these jackasses?

  27. I’ve had a similar experience. Although my website remains active, I can’t access my site’s email at all – instead I repeatedly get kicked back to a personal Yahoo email. Every message I’ve sent to Aabaco has been ignored.

    Last year, Yahoo were pretty bad for a while, so I researched alternatives. None seem to be reliable, or attractive, or inspiring, but it looks like I’ve got to start hunting again.

  28. I have had a Yahoo website for over 10 years, now. I am currently being blocked from accessing my own website control panel, by Aabaco! I can no longer make changes to my own business E-mails, and most importantly, I am being blocked from doing my weekly “self promotion” of my own website.

    Aabaco is offering to promote my website for $500.00 per year! Why would any businessman pay a company $500.00 to do something that we were doing for free, on our own, just last month. I will be filing a fraud complain with the State of Texas Attorney Generals Office, and recommend that other former Yahoo Web Hosting customer do the same thing, as well.

    • Same here I can’t get on and I’m blocked.

    • Same here and it’s now the end of January. Nothing works. They don’t care. FRAUD!!!!!!!

    • Same here. Perhaps it is time for a class action. If they keep harassing me that is among the things I will do. It is unacceptable that scams like this one should be allowed in the US!

  29. I think this is the worst company ever, I create a website on Nov. 21, 2015 and can’t log onto the site to create or add pages. They don’t call back, they’ll keep sending emails saying this ” Your case has been reviewed and we have determined that it needs special handling. We have escalated your Incident to our next level support team and will reply within the next 24-48 hours.” You don’t get any replies, no phone calls, but check this out everyone get an email stating make sure your account be current. They want their money.

    My question why take over a company and you don’t know how to fix the bugs. I build websites and use Yahoo alot. Never have problems with Yahoo. I have a problem they fix it.

    It’s a month today and they still don’t know what the issue is far as why I can’t logon pass my dashboard.

    I even asked for my money back, they keep giving me the run around. So if you are asking for your money back good luck!

  30. Yahoo if you are reading these comments you take your business back from these people. They don’t know how to fix issues.

  31. Aabaco small business is a disaster. Best advice I can give anyone is to AVOID them!! I stayed and was converted from yahoo thinking things would go seamless. WRONG. At times my website will completely become unavailable. At times my website will loose critical functionality that is key to my business. They are awful! Call their customer service and after 45 minutes you talk to someone who only notes what the problem is, does nothing and says nothing of value. “their engineers are working on the issue, is there anything else they can help with”. YES get my website working. Over 5 years w/ yahoo and ever one issue. Less than a month with this Micky Mouse company and two critical ones. *** AVOID AABACO ***

  32. these guys are complete crooks. Yahoo totally screwed all it’s customers by transferring its business to these unethical crooks. This is what I get for 10+ years of loyalty to Yahoo – totally screwed by them. Disgusting – both Aabaco and Yahoo.

  33. Aabaco = terrible. I agree with previous posts. Their control panel is even more confusing than Google and their domain price is $34.95/year. Are you serious? They make GoDaddy look like a well oiled machine.

  34. take wate from the mud and drown yourself in it.
    Stop wasting you PE’s money.

    Pathetic.

  35. I THOUGHT I HAD CANCELLED MY ACCOUNT WHEN THEY ANNOUNCED THE CHANGE, BUT THEY CHARGED FOR ANOTHER YEAR.
    SIX DAYS AGO ON DECEMBER 17, 2015, Nitish Kumar, CS Aabaco PROMISED A FULL REFUND OF $131.28 USD THROUGH PAYPAL. I HAVE NOT RECEIVED ANY EMAIL UPDATES AND PAYPAL HAS NOT RECEIVED THE REFUND. MY ACCOUNT SAYS IT IS STILL ACTIVE. WHERE IS MY MONEY?

  36. Unfortunately I will have to agree with most of the negative comments. Actually, I am not even sure whether this is still a correct statement, since I avoid to connect to the Aabaco site, being defined by Norton as a dangerous website.

  37. When I try to log in to my account my norton security says there is a phishing risk.

  38. This company is a disgrace! Worst company I have ever had to deal with. I have been calling them for ten days straight only to be sent into a loop.

    In case you didn’t know Aabaco was Yahoo, but they were both a branch of a mother corporation known as Melbourne IT. So we have all this hoopla right. My credit card on file had to be updated because my domain was going to expire. So of course I make the necessary changes, but no invoice shows up on my account. I call customer support on Dec 18th, they say wait for 24 hours for an invoice to show up.

    Dec 19th- No Invoice

    Monday Dec 21 I call them- in which they insist I add a different card and wait 24 hours. I do that.

    Tuesday- Dec 22nd I call them back and they tell me all I can do is wait

    Wednesday Dec 23- my website is down nothing can be done. Now I’m going crazy.

    At this point I am beyond frustrated. I then say Goodbye to Aabaco, or at least I thought.

    Thursday Dec 24th- I transfer my domain to Go Daddy. Now I call Aabaco beacause all I need is the last step which is for them to release my domain. I still have to call them back, in which they tell me that Melbourne must release my domain. So now I am calling Melbourne, who inform me the system will automatically contact Aabaco within 24 hours to release the domain.

    Monday Dec 28th- I contact Aabaco who tell me to wait, you guessed it, 24 hours for Melbourne to contact me.

    I contact Melbourne when they inform me an email was sent to Aabaco to take further steps on the 25th of December, and that I need to contact them.

    I’ve never hated a company so much in my life. I’m sure people will be transferring out. If you haven’t I’d urge you to do it now, because the minute something goes wrong you’re basically stuck. It’s customer service that isn’t well trained, and their whole operation has status error messages.

    Melbourne IT, AABACO, YAHOO- Well, I’d say you guys should run out of business, but the way you’re running things that will happen anyway. 🙂

  39. added a new email, support page shows procedure (https://help.luminate.com/kb/custom-mailbox/create-new-mailbox-sln17323). however this is not what it is, since yahoo/aabaco id is forced, and it is not possible to opt for a pop-only account.
    sent feedback, no great hopes.

  40. Same experience here. Can access my email but can’t access my website to make changes. They keep sending the password reset information to an old email address that has not been associated with my account in years and is no longer active. So very frustrating. I hate to think about having to completely re-do my website but it may be the only alternative.

  41. Can someone give me phone numbers to contact them? I am sharing your frustration, and I can’t find a single way to get in touch with anyone at the company. I desperately need to find a way to talk to someone there. Thank you!

  42. Seems I’m in a different boat than the rest of you, but still yet with an issue. I have been getting emails from my credit card company that the CC is being declined due to an expired date. Hmmm…. while I was still with Yahoo, the card was being on a regular monthly basis for my email / 1 webpage through and including 11/21/15. Now it seems that the new company does not have the accurate expiration date starting 12/21/15.

    When I went to update my account, I was able to get in and create the profile, but when I went to services, they say I don’t have any. Clearly they have my email address since it is in my profile, and I have a 2nd email address that I put in (not yahoo) that they can reach me through to let me know directly that there is an issue with my credit card information.

    I did submit an incident and got an incident #, and was going to call, but after reading all these comments, I hesitate to waste my time to let them know that they have a problem… they should know they have a problem and reach out to me.

    I just printed a document from their site from the Payment Methods page that says – “If you had a valid payment method on file with Yahoo Small Business that you do not see here, your information is still on file and active subscriptions are maintained. We are in the process of migrating all billing information, and your information should appear in coming weeks.”

    I’m documenting this “just in case” something goes wrong and I loose my email accounts due to their issue and if there is a class action law suit, I may want to be part.

  43. Other than trying to cancel a new service with Sprint wireless, I’ve never felt so frustrated as with Aabaco. After reading these posts, I don’t know if it makes me feel better being among the many souls in the same boat.
    I’ll just start re-building our website now but don’t know what’s gonna happen to our domain name.

  44. Different issue: My cc was billed today by “Yahoo Small Business” in the amount of $35.95. I had moved my hosting and domain away from yahoo in 2012, and do NOT have any account with yahoo except the free “yahoo.com” email. I had the cc company cancel the card immediately, and challenged the $35.95, which will delete the charge but what concerns me most is where did they get current cc info?? I had never heard of this “Aabaco” until I started chasing this cc charge.

  45. I have several websites here. I am going to move all of them. I xcan’t access anything. Keep getting error messages. The help screens are useless.

  46. Very disgusted with the company. They state they respond to emails within 24 hours. Website has been down for 7 days. Make full payment in December. I have had no email response back from the company

  47. Website is not working correctly. I contacted the company 7 days ago with an email. They state they respond within 24 hours. 7 days later no response. But they were more than willing to take the credit card payment

  48. Abaco stole my money after not being able to make my personalized business email work and refusing to refund my money for a faulty product.

  49. HORRIBLE service since Yahoo transition ……….. it is impossible to create and link a new yahoo email to our business account as all links take you nowhere. tried to upload a new website but for some reason their site is not updated with the latest updates, and the list goes on and on. Had to change host. TOTAL DISGRACE.

  50. Terrible service. I had been a customer for 10 years using Yahoo to host my domains. I paid $34.95 for 5 years per domain.
    The 5 year period was up last week. I did not receive an email letting me know. I discovered a charge on my credit card for $69. 90 from Yahoo. I went to Yahoo’s website to discover that my business had been switched to AaBaco. After a period of time, I was able to navigate their difficult website to discover that those charges were for 1 year!
    Help calls get direct to surly fellows, probably in India, who are no help and basically tell you that you are stuck. I say, “Not so, I am diisputing the charges with me credit card company and moving to another site that will charge you about $7 a year for domain names.” Bye Bye.

  51. I was a mostly happy Yahoo Small Business client since 2010. The transition to Aabaco Small Business in 2015 has been a total disaster from a customer’s standpoint. The business services formerly available from Yahoo are impossible to access with Aabaco. Their customer service is not customer service..it is an insult. Aabaco is a failure. Stay away.

  52. Anyone managed to transfer the domain registration to another provider? If so please explain how

  53. I have had issues with them as well. I was charged once for my domain in December and AABCO charged me again in January. From reading the posts above, it appears that his $ I won’t be getting back unless I call my bank and dispute the charges. My problems aren’t nearly as serious as those listed above but it appears that this sale of worthwhile product has been a mess.

  54. This is a companh of thieves. I dont have an account with them and one day I open my credit card account on my app and there’s over 2000 $ worth of transactions from them. Luckily I caught it before my card was maxed out. Dont give them your credit card info. I hope these guys gey burned.

  55. Previous Aabaco (Yahoo) Customer

    Yahoo made a big mistake outsourcing to Aabaco. Horrible delays in reaching them, super slow website. at least a 20 min wait for a customer service rep. Overall really bad customer service. I even had one of the Indians hang up on me as he could not answer a question I had.

    I recommend that you move your domains to somewhere else. I moved mine to GoDaddy but it took Aabaco almost a week to complete the transition !

  56. Yahoo was great, Aabaco is horrible. Customer support is as bad as it gets! Stay away.
    we’ve experienced many of the same issues mentioned above
    We’re now trying to figure out the best way to move our site elsewhere and not lose all of our emails

  57. Aabaco is a disgrace and will no doubt be out of business soon. Yahoo won’t be far behind.

  58. Yahoo has tumbled further and further down the sewer since their peak in the 90s. I need access to my domain, so I can start over from scratch with a different host. But Yahoo or Aabaco or Melbourne IT is holding my domain hostage, and I can’t get it back. Class action? Count me in!

  59. November 19, 2015 I moved my 2 websites from Yahoo/Aabaco to GoDaddy. A great move! November 28, 2015, my credit card on record with Yahoo/Aabaco was billed $95.88 for each domain for a total of $191.76. I contacted Aabaco on January 1, 2016 to report the error and ask for a refund. A woman with an Indian accent told me the money would be credited to my credit card. That was more than 3 months ago, 7 phone calls with about 469 minutes (7.8 hours) to get where I am with this issue today . . . nowhere. I still do have the return of my money. Aabaco told me they would call me today between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM my time. There was no call.

    • You should have saved your cancellation confirmation emails and then told the cc company it was an illegal charge, as obviously a company who would steal money off your credit card is a crooked company to begin with. So why trust them to fix it?

  60. ILYA BOGUSLAVSKY

    In June 2015 I asked Aabaco for refund the same day I ordered the service. After many calls and false promises by Aabaco to issue the refund I complained to my credit card company. The cc company attempted a charge-back, which Aabaco resisted by claiming “the charge was valid”. Now Aabaco says the refund cannot be issued because an attempted charge-back terminates the processing of the refund. As Aabaco is saying, you cannot get both the refund and the charge-back – that would be double recovery. So I have neither. No charge-back because it was a valid charge with refund provisions, and no refund because a charge-back was attempted. My recommendation: stay away.

  61. ILYA BOGUSLAVSKY

    … and something else: when I said “since you don’t give me my money back, let me use your service”, Aabaco replied that I cannot have the service because I have cancelled it. Once cancelled, the service cannot be reactivated. The only way to get the service is to pay again. Naturally, I am not doing that.

  62. I have no problem with them. There are always challenges and changes in technology. Think about the money you are paying. It hardly justifies your own IT dept. So if you need more support their are plenty of other options. You can create a site with Amazon. They will charge you 15-25% of the sale of your product depending on what you are selling.

    They give just reasonable service. Just average and they are going to take so much margin, it makes you uncompetitive by the time PayPal has finished with you and consumers demand replacements and returns. Etc, etc, we all know the drill. People think e-commerce is easy. But it is not, it is really hard. We all buy online. So when something does not go quite right think about the review and try and be nice. As it could be you the other end of the review some day.

  63. David! U sound reasonable, patient & experienced… Reading the bashing since Dec 2015 about lawsuits to be filed over overbilling $70, merging personal & business accounts BASHING BASHING BASHING… I was thinking…. New Technology… Transition.. Never perfect… Totally Concur w ur comments. Been a Yahoo customer since the 90’s.. Tried other ecommerce providers, to name a couple Amazon & eBay.. THEY GOUGE at 20%-25% charges… Yahoo has Never Been Great, Has Never Been Awful.. THINKING CHANGE WILL BE FOR THE BETTER!! Look forward to tomorrow w them.

  64. Terrible terrible terrible support.

    One support tech says one thing, another tech contradicts them and we’re left with more problems than with what we started with.

    There might be shadier and less helpful organizations out there (the mob?) but I doubt it.

  65. we hav taken the domain from yahoo,sep 2014,and created the pages and uploaded. after few days we cant access our website. we tried to contact yahoo to restore the site, but we have tried and tried and we gave up. during sep 2O15, the site has been renewed through credit card. during March 31st we atlast contacted aabaco customer care and got a complaint number. for a week I was behind aabaco and restored the domain. after restoring the domain to our surprice there is no data which we have uploaded. when contacted aabaco for the same, they say that to restore the data, we have to create a new case, so that based on new case aabaco support team will search and restore it. This very funny. Aabaco by not providing the needed support, minting the money year after years. This will continue. we have to do something collectively to stop this. small business holder valuable suggestions needed to end this scam

  66. Pandurang Narayanswamy

    Aabaco does not answer any queries. They say that the case is closed. Then one cannot access ones own ID because the password is changed by Aabaco and they do not respond. There is no telephone number to call in India. They have gobbled up the amount is paid to Yahoo for renewal for two years. I plan to take Yahoo to the consumer court and social sites for cheating Yahoo Small Business clients.
    How do I transfer my domain name to another vendor ?

  67. I’ve had the last 15 years and 16,000 plus emails with ALL my business information including documents, legal contracts, email exchanges, ect just disappear. called the number which gets you a junior person in India who after 2 hours said nothing they can do – won’t allow me to speak to any one else and no way to contact, or know who to contact, Aabaco or Iliminate? when I had latency issues they had some one on the US calling me and emailing to work out any issues (which they didn’t). I sent 20 emails to this address with no response even after pleading that this will destroy my business. I should have moved then but 2 months later, same thing happened and they can’t do anything – Yahoo’s website says they can access emails upto 7 days and this time the guy in India said he can see my historical emails, but can’t migrate them back to my account?? the next day, my calendar was deleted and cannot be accesses either. I have consulted a lawyer but this will require a class action suit.

  68. I cancelled my service and 2 months later they are trying to bill me. Called 3 times, still trying to get it resolved. Leave this company ASAP. Go with godaddy.

  69. I had used Yahoo services from more than 5 years with no issues at all. I had paid for 5 years of domain, web hosting, business email services to Yahoo Small Business just before they sold it off to Aabaco.

    It was a good amount of money and since last 5 – 6 months, I have not been able to login to the web hosting control panel. I have been with the Aabaco support team on chat and phone several times with several promises. Last week I was with them for almost 8 hours but to no help.

    They are not even ready to return my money. My website is still there,,,, but i need to update it and I am not able to. They have no solution, just some lame illogical excuses.

    Aabaco is a pure unprofessional and unethical organization. I have paid for 5 years, and I cant even transfer to some other service provider as my domain is locked and I cant get into it to unlock or get the authorization code for transfer

    Now when I looked for their reviews, I know its not just me, its ALL the AABACO Customers who are facing this.

    This is what I always get:
    —————————————————————————-
    —————————————————————————-
    Sorry! You don’t have permission to view this page.

    Please check the address of the page you were trying to reach and try again. If you believe you’re seeing
    this message in error, please contact your account administrator.

    Return to the Business Control Panel
    —————————————————————————-
    —————————————————————————-

  70. Robert Szatmary

    Aabco sent me an email to update my WordPress or they will suspend my website. I did this update many weeks ago and if anyone actually workss in their tech department, they would know that.

    I did it via WordPress, and I don’t appreciate the threat of suspending my account of some ten years, in these circumstances.
    Aabco might like to take the effort to check that I have updated WordPress (if they know how to do that) and then POLITELY inform me of problems or if something is still wrong. I just checked AGAIN with WordPress Log in and there are no updates available, SO I AM UPDATED!

    AABCO SHOULD KNOW That I am not impressed with THEIR service, the efficacy of Aabco technology (especially concerning emails) and I am even less impressed with THEIR LATEST EMAIL THREATENING TO SUSPEND MY WEBSITE IF I DO NOT UDPATE WORDPRESS, EVEN THOUGH I DID. To be frank, I have doubts as to whether Aabco employ anyone else other than sales people….Oh how I yearn for the services and support Yahoo offered in the past.

  71. Yahoo made a big mistake outsourcing to Aabaco. Horrible delays in reaching them, super slow website. at least a 20 min wait for a customer service rep. Overall really bad customer service. I even had one of the Indians hang up on me as he could not answer a question I had.

    I recommend that you move your domains to somewhere else. I moved mine to GoDaddy but it took Aabaco almost a week to complete the transition !

  72. AaBaCo people need to be behind prison. I am on hold right now for one hour and 20 minutes. My website is down for one week. I do not have accesss to my own website and can not transfer domain to somewhere else.

  73. What a disaster. Run as far from AABaco as possible. They shut down out domain (emaiil and website) since they could not get the response from email registered during domain registration (15 years ago). However they were billing us no problem. I have never seen this before. I guess they took over yahoo and domain registration had to be re verified. Our fault was we did not update that email address. But one could assume that if you getting paid the company still is in business. Instead they just shut down our business. WTF are they thinking?

  74. i AM UNABLE TO ACCESS MY WEBSITE TECHNOMED-SERVICES.COM AFTER THE TRANSITION. ENORMOUS LOSS TO MY BUSINESS. Product Head of Aabaco Small Business, Sri Rajan. HAS MESSED UP THE TRANSITION.

  75. Once again we cannot access our email. Sandipan our live chat person….said the Escalation Team was aware of the problem and was working to resolve it immediately 4 hours later no email- My call should be returned within 24 hours…..my email should be responded to within 24 hours in the interim our business is dead in the water. Beyond disgusted. Anyone have any suggestion for a new small business email service.

  76. We’re down, 2.5 hours on hold, no idea who or when or what will make them reply

  77. We are down for two days. Keep calling their help number and they are no help whatsoever. “We are here to help so don’t hang up please” then they put you on hold and you wait…and wait until you can’t hold anymore…sometime over an hour. This company SUCKS!!!! Out of the blue they ask random questions like my credit card information, password, etc….

  78. Yahoo was selling “webspace and domain” etc in India from long time. Somewhere in Jan 2016 they have sold their business to a company called Aabaco or luminate. They don’t have any address or telephone number even email in India, but they are providing services on behalf of yahoo. Now if a customer have any problem he can see the limited available solutions on Aabaco’s website or maximum he can ask a question which is to be answered by Yahoo but god knows when. Now people like me who purchased webspace from yahoo and now from last few days I am not able to send mails properly, I have none to contact in yahoo. I want my money back but clueless who to approach. I want to report this to Police or govt of India. Thanks

  79. Folks, if you still have Aabaco Small Business (formally Yahoo) it’s time to go.

    Their e-mail systems have been broken for over a month–many e-mails form Gmail-based systems, as well as many other domains, are delayed for hours to days. A review of their help forums shows that many, many people are having this problem. I’ve been around and around with them about this and they refuse to fix it. Now they’re going as far as deleting all threads related to this topic on their help forum. This issue has cost me tens of thousands in lost revenue, at least 40 hours of my time, and since e-mails are arriving late and out of order, my clients are starting to think I have brain damage.

    Yahoo was a great company, but was spoiled by horrible mismanagement. They’ve repeatedly managed to take gold, like Flickr, and turn it into garbage. Their hosting service has been in massive decline over the past 3 years, and it’s finally hit rock bottom.

  80. They tried to charge me past due amount AFTER I CANCELLED MY DOMAIN. But I had removed my debit card info and gone onto paypal to cancel recurring charges on that since they will not allow you to remove paypal off the account at all!

  81. OMG!!
    I WISH I HAD KNOWN THIS WAS COMING!
    I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE JOINED IN THE SUIT!

    Meyer_v_Aabaco_Small_Business,_LLC_et_al

  82. Why can’t we ALL follow his example and have a CLASS ACTION SUIT?

    OH, that’s right.

    I cancelled 2 of my 3 domains with them and will soon no longer be their customer.

    Now if only I could get them to STOP TRYING TO GET PAST DUE MONEY OFF A DOMAIN THAT WAS CANCELLED PRIOR TO THE TERM END!!

    Their own SERVICE AGREEMEMT says that ANY CHANGES IN BILLING requires THEM to notify ME. Changing billing dates to steal money from a domain I have informed you will be cancelled at next term is a BILLING CHANGE. Forcing RECURRING PAYMENTS on my debit card after informing me that I had unwanted recurring charges on my paypal simply because it is paypal (and I DEACTIVATED paypal AT PAYPAL to specifically AVOID recurring charges where you CHARGE FIRST then INVOICE AFTER YOU TAKE PAYMENT!) without my express permission is a BILLING CHANGE. AND AN UNWANTED CHANGE!

    AllAliBabaAccentCO stole money off my debit card.

    I cancelled 2 domains then. I wasn’t really using them, actually. The 3rd one I DO use. They tried to take money on the domain AFTER I cancelled. I have screenshots of CANCELLED and PAST DUE on the domain plus email confirmation of cancellation and email of payment not going through paypal 36 hours later. Paypal, as I mentioned, had been deactivated by me AT PAYPAL but they will not let you remove it from the wallet. I DID remove my debit card info AFTER they changed my payment date – with NO PRIOR NOTIFICATION and NO INVOICE OR BILL BEFOREHAND – or they would have stolen MORE money off the debit card.

    I only hope I can transfer my 3rd domain as I have read so many HORROR STORIES of AllAliBabaAccentCO holding domains for ransom and refusing to release them!

    Let’s ALL be Mr. Meyers!

  83. HERE IS THE DOCUMEMT DOWNLOAD PAGE ON THE AABACO LAWSUIT:

    https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/cand/310300/

  84. Who has successfully migrated away from Aabacco to Office 365 without major loss of data organization (folders etc.), who did you use to make the transition???

  85. I need to move a sitebuilder account to a new computer. How do I do this?