areill99's profile

areill99 says: (5 months ago)

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whew...are you done??? After that diatribe, I'm exhausted!

BTW, I'm not an employee, or a plant, blah blah. But guess what, I used Mediamax for some online backup storage to share a boatload of files (mostly photos) with friends/family. First, I would never entrust a faceless online company with my only copy of files, and next, I guess I was one of the lucky ones, I received SEVERAL emails about the MM/TLU changeover to my REAL (that means PAID) email account had plenty of time to remove the files, move them, or simply start with a new user name and begin uploading/storing/sharing on the new service as TLU. I'm amazed at all of the people that were so unhappy during the Streamload/MM change, but hmmm...they still seemed to hang on - I guess the service wasn't so bad, or perhaps they actually figured out that 200TB of online storage and massive file transfer would cost a normal mortal a fortune every month. Remember the "to good to be true deal??" (check out what EMC and other legitimate businesses charge for storage - a little reality check for you).

Yes - it sucks to have paid annual fees to a company that seems to not give a rat's ass to their customer base - I'm sure that they will not have paying customers for much longer. I read every single blog post before TLU removed all of the comments from their posts - a lot of ticked off paying customers, and some folks just using the service as either new customers, or creating new accounts and reporting bugs. Seemed to be a small percentage of people who actually were working through the pain instead of crying "I WANT MY FILES BACK". The latter are the people I have ZERO sympathy for. Anyone with any savvy at all would know not to entrust this company with their important files!!

Please understand this - my personal belief is that TLU (as they go by now) has botched the move from MM and if I were paying $30/month for what I thought was secure (and most importantly accessible) I would be pissed off too. But - why endure any more pain - cut the losses, cancel the account, notify the credit card company, and go to a more reliable online storage company, or buy your own server, rent space in a data center, and host your own files to share with everyone. The pain for me is obviously less than many customers since I have my original files, and not counting on someone else to take care of that responsibility, I'm fine with all of their outages. I treat the service as a back up and a place to share files that I don't feel like trying to send via email, etc.

Class action lawsuit - well, I wish anyone/everyone much luck, as the only ones that make any money off of those are lawyers. Here's another thought - what would happen if TLU sent out a massive email blast, or just posted on their site and said - hey folks, we screwed up really bad - our data center had a huge electrical fire, the fire suppression system failed, and all of our servers are toast - literally. With the way that their terms and conditions read (no matter what they say about GRANDFATHERING), they simply have NO LIABILITY for damages that you may suffer (financial, that is) for your files. I'd say the most you'd get back is the value of the payments when you didn't have access to your files. Don't have access for 3 months - let's see, 3 x $30/month - here's your $90 - have fun. Hope it was worth it.

So, rant all you want, bitch, moan, complain, threaten class action lawsuits, call them names and thieves, whatever - but remember this - their business could dissolve in a heartbeat, (and with the way things are going, most likely will) so, do yourself a big huge favor and just be prepared.

Let me boil all of this down here:

1. don't entrust a nameless/faceless online company with your important files
2. if you receive crappy service - take your business elsewhere
3. understand the true cost of the value that you're receiving - if it's too good to be true, it very well may be just that in the end.
(WHAT A NIGHTMARE!)