Yahoo have been copping a bit of strife lately about the way they’re running their business. Think what you will of their business strategy, the thing that bothers me the most is that I’ve been trying to give them money for Flickr for a couple of years now and failing abysmally. Every now and then I go back and check, thinking that surely they have fixed this revenue leak by now, but as of this morning, they’re still not allowing me to give them money for their service.

I reckon they’ve missed out on at least $50 from me, which is not much I guess. But I’m far from alone.

What’s the problem? Well, it’s a two stage thing. If I’m missing something obvious (and with that, two years of pro-membership) please do let me know.

The first problem – I want to pay with my credit card.

The credit card I previously used has expired (as they do). The only option I’m given around credit card payment is to EDIT the card, which I select. In order to proceed I then have to re-enter the card number OF MY EXPIRED CARD! Now, show of hands, how many people actually hold onto expired credit cards and would actually be able to complete this task? Anyone?!

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After going backwards and forward searching for the part where I can simply add a new card I give up and go to plan B – using PayPal. I use PayPal all the time, I used it last week on eBay and it worked fine. And yet, when I try to pay for my Flickr account using PayPal this is what I’m told:

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‘The email you entered is not associated to this payment agreement you are trying to confirm. Please try again’.

That isn’t even a sentence, right? I think I get the gist of what they’re saying but even with my advance PayPal skills (I moved from one country to another and still have a PayPal account – anyone else who has done that knows exactly how much more you know about PayPal than you ever wanted to) I’ve tried everything I know and can’t get this to work.

At any rate, I’ve now spent way more time on this than Flickr is worth to me. My once great love of Flickr is now dead. Yahoo has not only lost my $50, they’ve also lost my emotional connection to their brand and my previous evangelism – worth way more than all the pro subscriptions I’d ever pay in a lifetime would be worth.

But – here’s the point of the story (because I don’t really want to waste your time moaning about one company’s crappy user experience, where would we stop!) – this is a revenue point. This is a place in the user journey where money changes hands.

If you have a product that has interfaces like this – places where people are giving you money – please pay particular attention to them. Make sure they are working. Make it as easy as possible for me to give you my money.

There’s an old saying, ‘take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves’. I don’t think it’s entirely true – I think the pounds actually need their own special UX strategy but having lots of pennies come into the coffers to support us as we come up with great new ways of making lots of pounds is eminently sensible and a great way to STAY IN BUSINESS!

Don’t let easy money like this leak away. If you have interfaces like this one that might also be leaking, go check them now.

And, while you’re at it, make a note to check on them regularly.

Meanwhile, if you want to see my baby pics, I’ll be over at Facebook. I’m still looking for a new place to share my UX pics. Suggestions welcome.