MOZY on along to some other back up system

So my brother tells me about Mozy. it's unlimited space and it's only $5 a month and they back up your external drive, too.

Wow. Sounded too good to be true. So I charged my credit card and jumped right in. The Mac software for Mozy never worked. Then I started reading horror stories on the internet about Mozy being slow, not working, not being able to completely restore everything. So I asked for a refund. Mozy did refund me right away.

Then I went shopping for another service and found out that Mozy was the only one that did external drives. So I decided to use Mozy's free 2 gig service. If that software worked, I would give them a second chance. Well the free software worked great and backed up in a 4 days. Wow, that is friggin' slow. I have 3 gig upload speed and it took 4 days. OUCH.

So, once again I signed up for Mozy. This time it starts backing up all my stuff. About 6 days later I get a Backup Finished (ClientError 15). I know they don't mean me as the client and that it was my error. I did nothing. So I try again, and again, and again. I am not one to waste time. So I emailed support. No answer. I emailed again. No answer. It's now the weekend and I am researching people's concerns again with Mozy. The complaints date back to 2006. 4 years ago and they are still the same complaints.

I am not going to give this another moment. I can't trust my files with a company that can charges your credit card in seconds and yet takes weeks to back up 250 gig, if it even works at all. I have not had any success.

I read stories that people worked with the Mozy tech guys for months to fix these problems. What???? Are you friggin' crazy? I have to run 3 companies. I have no time to fix a fourth.

If you are looking into a back up service, just keep MOZYing on and find someone else.

UPDATE 1/9/10 2:12PM

finally I get this:


I am sorry to hear that you had trouble uploading data to Mozy. The "MozyClientError15" message occurred as the backup crashed and did not exit cleanly. I recommend that you perform the steps mentioned below:

Step 1: Try deselecting the particular (probably quite large) file or files from the backup and then run a backup. If the backup completes successfully, then reselect one of the files that were deselected and run another backup. Repeat as necessary. If that fails, try selecting a single file for backup and run a backup. Once it is done please re-include all the files and verify the status with Mozy.

Step 2: If you have scheduled your back ups at the top of the hour (e.g. 12:00 or 3:00), we may be experiencing excessive congestion which may cause the connection to timeout. To resolve this try scheduling your backups just off the top of the hour (e.g. 12:07 or 2:53).

Step 3: I recommend that you run the disk utilities, reboot the computer and perform another backup and verify. I have included a few steps that should help us run the disk utilities:

1. On the Apple menu bar, click on "Go".
2. Please choose "Utilities" and click on it.
3. In the "Utilities" window, click on "Disk Utility" icon.
4. In "Disk Utility" window, on the left hand side, please choose "Macintosh HD".
5. At the bottom, please choose and click on the button "Repair Disk Permissions" / "Repair Disk".
6. If prompted to authenticate please provide your system user ID and password.

If the issue persists, send us the updated Mozy log file. For Mac operating system: please click on Hard drive\Library\Logs\MozyHome.log

Looking forward to hear from you.

Thanks,

Jayanth
Mozy Support

I replied with this:

 shouldn't have to do any of this. Please just refund my money. I just signed up. thanks.
If I wanted to do all this configuring, I would have stayed with a PC.
Sincerely,

Jack Scalfani

UPDATE 1/11/10 1:18 PM

I get an email again from customer service person named Jayanth who was kind enough to give me the steps in canceling my membership and getting a refund.


UPDATE 1/11/10 5:08 PM





So I followed their instructions and then I get this email:

 Hi Jack,

I'll be transferring this ticket to our billing team who will check with your account to process your request and email you the status. In case you need clarification or further assistance, please email me and I'll be glad to assist you.

Thanks,

Geetha
Mozy Support

Now I am more frustrated, because they are so nice and yet their product fails. Why not have your customer service people write the software and your awful coders answer phones. Then maybe MOZY would work like it promises. They truly have been nothing but kind to me and I hope it stays that way all the way to my refund.  






UPDATE 1/12/10 11:10 AM


Okay. I got a full refund. that was great customer service. Mozy is great on refunds, just not backing up your software. Thanks Mozy for being professional about all this.

THIS IS WHY AMERICA IS HURTING!!!!

I haven't been more motivated by a video, than I have by the following video. Turn it up and be ready for your heart to beat out of your chest and your blood to run hot. It's very aggravating and true. Please post a comment after you read this.

WARNING: STAY AWAY FROM WRAP ONE IN ANAHEIM

I had my van done in a car wrap by WrapOne.com. It wasn't a bad job. It's supposed to be warrantied for 3 years.

I was very pleased. So I decided to get a 10ft banner done for my BBQ sauce at the Orange County Market Place. The weird thing was, they changed their location. Okay. No problem. I hire them for my banner. I never really asked why. If their work is good, I don't care what they are called.

So I paid about $180 . Not bad either. Then the white spots started to show. There are bare spots showing on my banner. So I called Alex Perez and left a message. No call back. Then I called the next week. No call back. One more week I left I message and no call back. I finally got a hold of him today and he basically isn't going to fix it and says his warranty doesn't cover that.

WHAT DOES A WARRANTY COVER???? I told him that if he didn't stand behind his product, then I would be forced to let everyone know. He hung up on me. NICE!!!

Do not use WRAP ONE for any work. Their info is:

Wrap One
Alex Perez
1185 N Red Gum St
Anaheim, CA 92806
(714) 630-9727

DIGG.com ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE

If you know about Digg.com then you probably use the site often for your latest news. For those of you who don't know Digg.com, your not missing out on the next revolution, so don't worry.

Digg.com allows users to submit stories from all over the internet and post them on Digg. Then Digg users all vote the story up or down. If the story gets enough votes up, then it can go the the front page of Digg.

Most stories never see the light of day, but if you do get your story on the front page then it will be read by thousands of people an hour. Most people try to get their own blogs or company website on Digg so they can get all that traffic. Digg is pretty good at preventing self promotion.

Now let's talk about what Digg has become. Digg has become overrun by 19 year old males that are vulgar, frustrated, and angry at the world. How do I know this? Well, let's see. Everyday this week there has been stories on the front page of Digg about legalizing marijuana. That's just a start.

Let me just show you what the top stories are right now. These stories below are front page stories. Let's talk about them briefly. Wow....Look!!! Legalizing pot story #5. What a shock!

The top story on the above image only has 74 diggs. That story should never have reached the front page. Oh yeah, unless your one of the many 19 year olds that are "Gaming" the site.

"Gaming" a website is quickly getting all your network of friends to vote so that it gets the most movement to the front page. Or you can also set up dummy email accounts and act like different people then voting for yourself. The bottom line is that this site is manipulated just like any website the becomes popular on the web. It happened to Slashdot. Thankfully Digg came around to atract the rodents away from the true Geeks. The termites will find a good website and destroy it's usefullness. Watch out Twitter! Your next.

Look at the story about George Clooney's sweat flavored Tofu. I rest my case.

Digg.com has lost it's usefullness and has become so onesided in it's views due to the control that a certain demographic has been allowed to have.

Here is what Digg users believe: legalizing drugs is good, Obama is God, Bill Gates is the devil, Christians are all bad people and digg users wish they were dead, Walmart needs to be destroyed.

You may say I am being pretty generalized. I am not. I have read the above comments hundreds of times in a single week and I have been with Digg for about 2 years now. If you say anything against their beliefs they will Digg you down so fast your comment goes away.

It's pretty sad to see Kevin Rose's baby grow up to be so onesided. It used to be a great forum for all to discuss/debate topics. Now it's become an angry pit of kids who do nothing but vent their anger out on others. Not to mention, the headlines are giving "The Onion" a run for their money.

May Digg.com rest in peace.

CLASH OF THE TITANS

We are definitely in a period of battles when it comes to the technology world. One of the problems is that this country is still living off of old laws and as technology grows, so should the laws. But they don't!

Ironically the top three items sold on the internet are also the three battles going on in the technology world. Music, Movies, and Books.

CLASH #1: MUSIC
This is the most famous of the three. I run an artist management company and all my artists were doing well launching their careers. When Napster hit the scene at the turn of the century, my new artists couldn't even make a living off of CD sales. Music was being stolen by the billions. Since then, our company has chosen the path of Hollywood. Music definitely is not a good industry to be at this time.

Once the music reaches all time piracy levels, here comes the OLD gate keepers (RIAA) who are living by the OLD laws. They begin suing everyone. They strong armed ISPs for private information on users. They even sued innocent people who didn't even know how to turn on a computer. It was quite embarrassing.

If I buy a CD, am I allowed to have one copy as back up? Why can't I make many copies. I have not stolen anything. It's like a photograph. I can scan a photograph that I bough and send to all my friends with out any consequence. The moment I do that with music, forget it!

There is so much wrong with the music industry. WHY DO WE STILL PRODUCE ALBUMS. Now that everyone is on iTunes, why not just produce individual songs. I will tell you why. Because no one would by 9 out of 10 songs from an artist. Every CD I own has 3 good songs and 7 bad ones. The music industry is still run by 60 year old men who remember having lunch with Sinatra in the good old days. Technology will force that to change.

CLASH #2: MOVIES

The only reason movies haven't been pirated as much as music is because of bandwidth. Why do you think your ISPs are going all "Big Brother" on us. We will soon be capped on how much we can download on the internet. Time Warner and Verizon are already doing it. You only get about 40 Gig a month. That's about one movie's worth in download terms, depending on the quality of the movie. If you want HD, forget it.

The day a movie comes out in theaters my sister can walk her street and buy a dvd copy for only $10. Can you believe that???? I won't tell you that she lives in New York, because she might get in trouble. Sometimes she can get them before they hit theaters. That's pretty bad.

My family stopped going to theaters years ago. I won't spend $50 for the family to see a movie, when in 4 months I can own the movie for $19.99. This year we stopped buying DVDs altogether. There is no reason to buy the movie for $19.99 when we just watch it once or twice. We could rent it twice for about $10. We have over 1000 dvds in our movie room and half are still in the wrapper. Once again technology will change the OLD ways. I predict DVDs will be gone in less than 5 years.

CLASH #3: BOOKS

This fight just started today. Two days ago, Amazon's Kindle 2 came out with a feature that reads a book out loud for you. How cool is that. It was only cool for two days. Today the OLD gate keepers from the Authors Guild told Amazon that reading a book to people makes it an audio book and that is against copyright laws. I can't wait to see how this clash turns out.

Google was scanning all books for the worlds biggest online library. Oh no!!! Don't make books electronic. They can be copied as quickly as music, if not, even faster. It's just text.

All of these fights are about money, of course. OLD gate keepers who have been chosen to control the money for the big three industries are losing control. Their towers are crumbling by the hammer of technology. It's going to happen. Don't fight it, because Goliath will always lose in the public eye.

The next CLASH coming is patents. It's not here yet, but it's coming. Round #1: Apple vs. Google?