Finally some good news from the Yahoo Mail Updates blog regarding the earlier Yahoo SMTP Issues:

Recently we began experiencing an unexpected increase in traffic through the servers we have dedicated for POP/SMTP messages. When we first became aware that some users were having their messages delayed because of this we examined the issue, and the initial solution appeared to have the problem under control. However we soon learned that more needed to be done to ensure the levels of service we strive to provide.

As a result we spent the last several days not only upgrading hardware resources for our SMTP servers, but also restructuring the way the bandwidth of these servers is allocated. We are confident that this solution will not only resolve the immediate problems, but also ensure that the systems are even more reliable in the future.

This is definitely welcome news after about 10 days of significant mail delays.  There is a minor fix on the client side: you need to visit the Yahoo Mail site and check out the POP/SMTP configuration options to see if new servers are specified.  I had to change my settings, but once I did that emails sent instantly.

One point of feedback I would offer about this situation is that Yahoo should have offered better communication throughout the process.  I realize that it’s not in-style for these larger companies to offer “system status” pages, but this would have alleviated the entire situation. I appreciate the level of detail they offered in the “resolution” blog post, but this would have been great while this was going on.  Instead a lot of us were left to stew in our frustration and anger, demonstrated in the comments of my original posting.  This only further soured the already bitter taste in our mouths.