Mozy Wants To Explain Wireless Internets To You
You might think that a company like Mozy, which sells secure online backup services, would be able to troubleshoot common technical issues that are directly related to its business. After all, surely Heather isn’t the only customer to have problems with her initial backup hanging for several days in a row. But instead of offering useful assistance, Mozy’s tech support person told Heather that the problem was that “wireless internets don’t like lots of files flying through the air.” Wow, that must really cause problems with Mozy’s business model.
Here’s the transcript from her aborted tech support chat:
[Mozy Support]: Heather, is this a new issues or one you’ve discussed with us previously?
Heather: Hi. I signed up for Mozy just over a week ago. Since then, it’s only backed up 2% of my computer, and it’s made my computer very slow. This is much slower than I expected, and than the instructions say. Most of the day I’m not even using the computer, and I have it set to never go to sleep. Why is it taking so long?
Heather: This is a new issue.
[Mozy Support]: How much data do you have selected?
Heather: 166 GB
[Mozy Support]: This amount of data is quite large. Do you have a lot of pictures?
Heather: I have a lot of pictures and music. I don’t see why that amount should be a problem – it’s a standard MacBook, and the HD is no where near full.
Heather: In any case, 2% is really slow.
[Mozy Support]: Aer you using a wireless connection?
Heather: Yes.
[Mozy Support]: This is also part of the problem. Wireless internets do not like a lot of big files moving through the air
Heather: Ok, I need to speak to someone else. There is no such thing as “wireless internets”. And wireless networks can handle plenty of traffic.
[Mozy Support]: Are you familiar with San francisco
Heather: What? Why is that relevant?
[Mozy Support]: They have city wide wireless internet
[Mozy Support]: And if you are there, it might have to do with your slow backup
Heather: Um ok. That has nothing to do with me. I have my own wireless network at home.
[Mozy Support]: I see
Heather: May I please speak with someone else?
[Mozy Support]: Yes, I will close this chat, and you should be able to wait for another tech
Thank you for using Mozy Support Chat. You may now close this window.
Heather adds, “Needless to say, I cancelled my service. After some persistence, I was able to find a tech via email who was nice enough, and they refunded me the year’s worth of service I signed up for.”
Update: Someone in charge of Mozy’s support group saw this post and sent us the following email:
I wanted to thank you for calling attention to the poor experience that Heather recently had with our support group. While 166GB of data can take up to a few weeks to backup depending on the user’s broadband speed, it was not appropriate for our support tech to comment in this manner in this situation. We sincerely apologize for this incident and I have contacted Heather directly to express our regrets in person.
We’ve also looked into this incident and have taken appropriate action to prevent this from happening again.
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