4 ms·

TL;DR: He used free Mozy backup account. Hard drive failed. Replacement took 2 months. He never tried to recover the file within 2 months. Mozy's policy is to d

by riobard 16y ago

TL;DR: He used free Mozy backup account. Hard drive failed. Replacement took 2 months. He never tried to recover the file within 2 months. Mozy's policy is to delete data of free accounts if no activity for 30 days. Data deleted. He went mad. Does this mean “cloud” fails? Hell no……

res0nat0r 16y ago
More like it means read your TOS closer, and don't get mad when data from your FREE account is deleted in accordance with their policy.
arethuza 16y ago
"He never tried to recover the file within 2 months" If my hard drive failed I'd be recovering the data back somewhere, anywhere (e.g. a VPS), within hours.
- notaddicted 16y ago
  He mentions in a comment that he was using their web interface to access individual files while his laptop was out. Also, the free plan was limited to 2GB. Given that he isn't exactly screaming about it, I think that this was either not his most important data, or not his primary backup recourse. I sympathize, because in the last 10 years I've probably "OKed" over 100,000 pages of TOS, and not read a single one. The fact that all his files were gone and he didn't know it means one of two things: either they are disorganized, or pretty fucking nonchalant about wiping user data. Either is unacceptable in a backup company.
MichaelGG 16y ago
At least they could have emailed him a few days beforehand saying "Hey, you haven't used our service for 4 weeks. We're about to delete the data!"
- mbreese 16y ago
  This was a customer service fail, in that they didn't notify him. But this isn't a cloud or enterprise EMC fail at all. I think blaming all of EMC for this is a little over the top.
  - SpikeGronim 16y ago
    If your backup provider elects to delete your data due to an obscure ToS clause then it is their fault for sure. The article does not say anything new about cloud providers - you have to trust their competence. But this is a critical failure by EMC / Mozy and is nobody's fault but theirs.
  - geuis 16y ago
    He wasn't a customer. He was using a free service. Unless you're paying someone money, you're not a customer. If you live next to a coffee shop and use their wifi without ever buying coffee, do you expect the shop to help you reconnect if their internet goes down? So no, it has nothing to do with customer service. Its someone who A) was using a free service and B) never bothered logging in to make sure his data was still being hosted by said free service.
    - Klinky 16y ago
      Even free service customers are still "customers". Mozy could have even spun this warning e-mail off as a promo for their Pro service. Send out an e-mail saying "Warning, your data will be deleted in x days", then the body can say something like "Mozy Free customers need login at least once every 30 days to keep their account active. Please click the link below and login to let us know you're still using our service. If you do not respond your data will be deleted. You can remove this restriction by upgrading to Mozy Pro, for only $9.95/month." Wham. Informs the customers, let's them fix their problem & gives them an alternative if they don't want to do this every 30 days. Instead they elected to delete his data w/o giving a warning besides something deep in their ToS. There was a failure with him getting back into his account. When he finally got in and found out his data was gone, they basically sent him canned responses from customer service reps who obviously don't have the power to help customers. The only thing that saved his data was being able to write a angry blog post which caught the attention of Mozy PR. Surprise! Surprise! The data actually wasn't deleted after all. Needless to say, if they really didn't have the data, then that would make them seem better in my eyes. The fact that they did have the data, but their customer service rep didn't have the power or the training to find it - or maybe he did but was not allowed to divulge it to a non-paying customer just reeks of mismanagement.

by riobard 16y ago

res0nat0r 16y ago

More like it means read your TOS closer, and don't get mad when data from your FREE account is deleted in accordance with their policy.

arethuza 16y ago

"He never tried to recover the file within 2 months" If my hard drive failed I'd be recovering the data back somewhere, anywhere (e.g. a VPS), within hours.

notaddicted 16y ago
He mentions in a comment that he was using their web interface to access individual files while his laptop was out. Also, the free plan was limited to 2GB. Given that he isn't exactly screaming about it, I think that this was either not his most important data, or not his primary backup recourse. I sympathize, because in the last 10 years I've probably "OKed" over 100,000 pages of TOS, and not read a single one. The fact that all his files were gone and he didn't know it means one of two things: either they are disorganized, or pretty fucking nonchalant about wiping user data. Either is unacceptable in a backup company.

MichaelGG 16y ago

At least they could have emailed him a few days beforehand saying "Hey, you haven't used our service for 4 weeks. We're about to delete the data!"

mbreese 16y ago
This was a customer service fail, in that they didn't notify him. But this isn't a cloud or enterprise EMC fail at all. I think blaming all of EMC for this is a little over the top.
- SpikeGronim 16y ago
  If your backup provider elects to delete your data due to an obscure ToS clause then it is their fault for sure. The article does not say anything new about cloud providers - you have to trust their competence. But this is a critical failure by EMC / Mozy and is nobody's fault but theirs.
- geuis 16y ago
  He wasn't a customer. He was using a free service. Unless you're paying someone money, you're not a customer. If you live next to a coffee shop and use their wifi without ever buying coffee, do you expect the shop to help you reconnect if their internet goes down? So no, it has nothing to do with customer service. Its someone who A) was using a free service and B) never bothered logging in to make sure his data was still being hosted by said free service.
  - Klinky 16y ago
    Even free service customers are still "customers". Mozy could have even spun this warning e-mail off as a promo for their Pro service. Send out an e-mail saying "Warning, your data will be deleted in x days", then the body can say something like "Mozy Free customers need login at least once every 30 days to keep their account active. Please click the link below and login to let us know you're still using our service. If you do not respond your data will be deleted. You can remove this restriction by upgrading to Mozy Pro, for only $9.95/month." Wham. Informs the customers, let's them fix their problem & gives them an alternative if they don't want to do this every 30 days. Instead they elected to delete his data w/o giving a warning besides something deep in their ToS. There was a failure with him getting back into his account. When he finally got in and found out his data was gone, they basically sent him canned responses from customer service reps who obviously don't have the power to help customers. The only thing that saved his data was being able to write a angry blog post which caught the attention of Mozy PR. Surprise! Surprise! The data actually wasn't deleted after all. Needless to say, if they really didn't have the data, then that would make them seem better in my eyes. The fact that they did have the data, but their customer service rep didn't have the power or the training to find it - or maybe he did but was not allowed to divulge it to a non-paying customer just reeks of mismanagement.