Mozy Rant

We take time away from this friendly little writing blog for a rant….

Have you heard of Mozy? It’s an online backup service for your computer, where you sign up, set up a schedule for backups and … that’s it. Your computer henceforth automatically runs backups to Mozy’s server so that in the event of computing catastrophe, or your office burning down, you can get all your computer files back.

Mozy comes highly recommended and has all sorts of accolades. You can sign up for free (for something like 2MB of storage), have a personal account with unlimited storage for something like $5 a month, or a business account which uploads much faster. All pretty reasonable, I thought, and I’d had too many e-friends lately lose their computer drives to various assorted nasties, so in May, I decided to sign up

There were a couple little, opening glitches, but I got help from their Support staff and, for a month, things were good. Then, my mother’s computer experienced the Blue Screen of Death and I got a new computer so she could get my working one. At first, I was busy setting up the new computer, figuring out Vista, all that fun stuff, but about a week later, it occurred to me that I didn’t have Mozy set up on my new computer. But, hmmm, I didn’t want to have to go through that whole, long, initial backup all over again–my computer estimated it would take a week–so, I sent them an email to ask if there was a way around it.

I was told that there wasn’t a “clean” way to do this, but that the best method would be for me to sign up for a second account on the new computer, and then to alert the crack Mozy support staff, and they would transfer all my files from the old account to the new one, and then cancel the original account and refund my credit card for the temporary, duplicate account.

Well, that seemed kind of unwieldy for a situation that MUST have come up before, but, okay. That’s what I did.

On July 16th.

You can see what’s coming, right?

Nothing.

I have been practically bombarding Mozy with emails trying to get someone, anyone to address this problem.

Because, as of right now, I have not one, but TWO paid accounts and yet have been completely unable to do a backup in a month. Despite having–on their instructions–paid them TWICE for the honor of completely ignoring me.

And the only answer I got was from someone telling me to call them–which isn’t really an option since I’m nowhere near my home laptop during business hours and, anyway, why should I run up MY phone bill? Why is the burden for fixing THEIR problem on ME? Why, for that matter, is it necessary to have a phone call at all? The original instructions came from their alert support staff via email, and all I want is for them FIX the problem, which presumably they can do without verbal instructions from me, huh? (Like I have time to sit on the telephone with customer service?)

I don’t even dare tell them to just cancel both accounts because I am SURE that they wouldn’t give me a full refund. You just know that they would keep the money for the months I’ve been signed up–you know the first month my one account wasn’t working right, the second month when it was, and then the third month when I had TWO accounts, neither of which could be used at all. You just know that if I say “Cancel,” they’re going to give me a pro-rated refund on “time left” in my yearly contract.

Idiots.

Why is it so impossible to get good service these days? Why is it so impossible to get service from a company that you’re are paying solely FOR service. It’s not like I bought a camera or a cellphone that suddenly wasn’t working–there are companies out there with good products and lousy customer service, but in this case, the service IS the product. I’m paying them to backup my computer (or, more precisely, to give my computer a destination to send the files to be backed up), and I’m getting nothing–no service AND no customer service.

Frustration is high, and you know, I just had to share. I feel like I should apologize for having recommended them as being a good option for backing up your computer. (Which, if you’re not doing, you SHOULD. It is so, so vital!) You might be using them and everything may be going smoothly … or you could get completely stuck like I am. At this precise moment in time, I have absolutely no faith in them–or faith that, had my computer crashed, that I would have gotten a useable backup from them.

Because if they can’t automatically do a transfer when someone upgrades their computer, how can you be sure that they can transfer your files BACK when you need them? I can’t possibly be the first customer to have bought a new computer while using the Mozy service, and who did not want to have to suffer through the inconvenience of that looooong initial backup all over again. And I am livid over the fact that I am now paying for TWO accounts and getting ZERO service.

Does that seem right to you?

No. I don’t think so either.

Thanks for listening to the rant. At least I vented some steam, that’s something, anyway.

(Note: All the emphasis added to this post by using capital letters instead of italics? Very tacky of me, but then, I’m upset, and sometimes nothing will do but to shout in capitals. It’s better than shouting in person, right? But, really, as a person who tries to write about good grammar and good manners, I feel compelled to admit that that was grammatically wrong of me, no matter how emotionally satisfying.)