MozyHome - 1.5.2.1

I was a Beta Mozy user about two years ago and, up until August 2009 I found the backup service to be reliable and an excellent value.

Something has gone terribly wrong with this service. Maybe it was coming with it being part of Decho...but the backups became erratic in late August 2009. Server connections would drop for no reason, errors like "User account in use," which they do not explain on the site. On one incremental it would report that it was backing up a few GB, other times, 20GB, other times 60GB, or even more. With few changes being made to my system, why would an incremental backup vary between 1% to 100% of my entire holdings?

Tech support and escalation support have been working with me but they keep trying to roll out new versions of the software....which requires the deletion of backup configurations, which take time to recreate.

Worse yet, I had a few hundred GB backed up, and simply disappear from their servers....at least when the backups were having problems, I knew that most of my data was still in their possession.

I don't know if it's the software or the servers they are probably contracting, but I have to go back to old fashioned hard drives and bringing them offsite periodically. Carboninte does not support external drives, and simply backing up a Mac laptop internal drive is not terribly useful.

Does anyone have experience with Amazon S3? There are client applications which use this service.

USED to be a very satisfied customer. Not any more.

I had been using Mozy for the Mac since it was in beta in 2007. Things had been going along pretty smoothly until August of this year (2009) when suddenly connections would be dropped when backing up either of our two computers. I ran several network speed tests and all passed with upload and download speeds right at my ISP's specs. I uploaded and downloaded several gigs of files to my remote host and never encountered sluggish or complete shutdowns in speed. I was completely satisfied that my Macs and my network connection were reliable.

When I contacted Mozy "support," I got no response for a week. I sent multiple messages and included my primary and alternate email addresses as well as my phone number. Still no luck except an automated response providing me with a trouble ticket number.

I had had an email correspondence with one of their technical engineers in March or April so I began copying him on my emails. Even those went unanswered.

I found that Mozy had been acquired by some larger (ie cost-cutting) firm and one of the things that went by-by was the toll-free tech support number. There was no way to easily get in touch with Mozy support!

I tried the "live chat" route and had a drone on the other end who had no inkling of what I was trying to describe as my problem, even though I was copy-pasting info from the Mozy log into the chat window. She went of onto tangents, such as "What's your ISP?" "Uh, Comcast." "Oh, yes, Comcast has been known to have service disruptions in the past. Do you like lamb and curry?" I thought that well, every ISP has had disruptions in the past but I can prove that that wasn't the case with me.

I located the Mozy Business services blog and wrote a comment at random to one of the blogger's recent posts, begging him to get someone to contact me and help me get my backups working. A week later (now nearly three weeks into my odyssey) he responded and appeared to take some semblance of ownership of my case. Also at that point I simply wanted a refund of the unused amount of my advance subscription. Done he told me. Nothing further happened, no further contact with me.

Then I researched the company and found the VP in charge of Decho (Mozy) and wrote him a letter sent by the old-fashioned way - the USPS. No response. God-damn it. What is with this outfit where no one gives a shit about a customer's problems?

Finally, on October 14, six weeks into this shit, I get a note from someone informing me that my credit card account has been credited with the balance on my subscription. I quickly went to my CC online service center to verify (and to take a screen grab!) that I had finally been credited.

This outfit used to be really responsive. Now they simply wade about in copious amounts of deep kaka. Furthermore, the treatment I received has demonstrated yet again how truly awful off-shore tech support has become. Can you spell i-n-d-i-a? Very precise English but not an ounce of technical expertise or individual initiative. Why did no one take total ownership and responsibility of my case? Why did no one telephone me as I had suggested? Because those are things not spelled out in the little drone handbook and script they read from.

If you're looking for mission critical cloud backups, Mozy is NOT for you. However, if you enjoy online mystery or hidden object games, then try Mozy - see if you can find the hidden tech support engineer within five calendar days. Bonus points if you find the lamb & curry.