Yahoo had a sponsored search webinar earlier today. Dutifully we signed up. Rather bizarrely it asked us to phone in to be able to hear it rather than being being able to hear it via the PC speakers.

Being a bit nerdy and geeky we balked a bit at having to phone to hear it - BUT I did phone in - at which point it asked me to key in the meeting number then my attendee number. My colleague shouted these over to me and I stuck them in and finally got through to the webinar.... The next 5 minutes were taken up with everyone saying "Hello..", "Hello.. ", "Hello..", "can you hear me?" etc etc. After about 5 minutes the organisers asked us to switch mute or secrecy on at our ends - but the seminar still didn't begin. We hung on for a bit longer - some wise chap listening it at this point said words to the effect of "Now we know why the Yahoo CEO resigned..." Which caused a few giggles (well - we were getting fed up by now and easily amused). Then a somewhat condescending chap at the Yahoo end explained, in what sounded a reasonably patronising manner, how listeners could mute the call at their end. Conference still hadn't started though - and we've been waiting for 20 minutes now.

It must be said, by this point we'd had enough and I hung up but I've got to say - that was a bit of a shambles Yahoo. It would have at least helped if you'd told us what was going on - or rescheduled for half an hour later. We understand technical hitches but we're all pretty busy people - and sitting around in the dark with no idea of prospective timescales, whilst at the same time being patronised is not my idea of how to win people over.