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Posts Tagged ‘Dell’

Downgrading my Mozy account and getting a refund

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Let’s go on a little journey.

Back in August I heard an advertisement from Carbonite online backup. I thought, you know? What the heck, I’ve been thinking/worrying about this for two years. I’ll give it a try. So I did. Unfortunately, I was in the Firefox web browser. For some reason, you can’t successfully download and install Carbonite through Firefox, EVEN THOUGH they have a Firefox specific download page. After 3 days of messing with this, uninstalling, reinstalling, restarting, online chatting (their online chat helper person sucks btw), they FINALLY thought to ask what browser I was in and then informing me it doesn’t work with Firefox. CARBONITE FAIL.

So, I went to their direct competitor, Mozy. I signed up for the free 2GB trial account. My backups completed just fine every day for four months. SOLD!

I sign up for the unlimited account. Just the monthly version at this time because I’m a skeptic and don’t want to hand them $100 before I even see it work fully once.

After two months of not being able to do a full back up (I actually was able to get 71GB of my total 250GB backed up before it failed one time) I’m ready to cancel. I’ve already been told by the Mozy support tech I’ve been bouncing e-mails off of for two weeks that I’ll be refunded both payments that I’ve already been charged.

As I said, I’ve been bouncing e-mails off of Mozy and they are trying to figure out what is wrong. I’ve e-mailed them log files, etc, and the last thing they said was there is a conflict with my Symantec (a bunch of errors in their logs). I don’t have Symantec installed anymore (I think I uninstalled a month ago) so I was going to uninstall and re-install Mozy, but after I uninstalled I felt I’d rather just opt out of the reinstallation and go with another option.

I went through the online chat to see how that refund they promised me 10 days ago was coming. Then I requested to be downgraded back to the free account (I don’t want to delete my account until they refund my money). Here’s how that went:

(full chat log):

Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with ‘Mubarak’
Mubarak: Welcome to Mozy Live Support. May I have your account email address please?
Christopher McCulloh: REDACTED
Mubarak: Thank you. How are you doing?
Christopher McCulloh: ok, you?
Mubarak: I am doing good. Thank you for asking.
Mubarak: How may I assist you?
Christopher McCulloh: As you may be able to see from my case history, I was supposed to receive a refund for all charges due to the fact that I have not yet been able to complete a backup
Mubarak: Do you have any case ID for the same?
Christopher McCulloh: REDACTED
Mubarak: Thank you, let me check.
Mubarak: I see that this ticket is under research team.
Mubarak: I am checking your account on the Mozy server.
Mubarak: Thank you Christopher, The actual ticket for the refund is REDACTED
Mubarak: I have checked the status and the billing team is working on it to get you the refund.
Mubarak: I will add a note to them about this.
Christopher McCulloh: Ok, how long will that take?
Mubarak: I will update them to make it as quick as possible.
Mubarak: I cannot promise you the exact time.
Christopher McCulloh: ok. Thank you.
Mubarak: Welcome Christopher.
Mubarak: Is there anything else I might help you with today?
Christopher McCulloh: Yes, how do I downgrade back to the free 2GB account?
Mubarak: For that you will have to cancel the existing account completely, or sign up for the free account with a different email address.
Christopher McCulloh: hrm… ok. I’m not ready to do that without having received a refund. Any way to put my account on hold so I’m not charged again?
Mubarak: I will update this request as well to the billing team.
Mubarak: They will contact you via email.
Christopher McCulloh: ok, thanks
Mubarak: Welcome Christopher.
Mubarak: Thank you for contacting Mozy technical support. You have a wonderful day.
Mubarak: Bye.
Christopher McCulloh: you as well.

So, double FAIL, but we’ll see how it turns out in the end. Mozy has been more than fair/friendly so far and I will definitely keep them in mind for future backup needs. Let’s hope they don’t ruin that for themselves by screwing me here at the end…

Tags: back-up, backup, blog, cancel, carbonite, Computer, Computer Problems, Dell, fail, mozy, refund
Posted in autobiographical | 5 Comments »

Fixing Dell XPS 410 Front Panel Error Codes 3 & 4

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Does your Dell XPS 410 just sit there with a solid green 3 & 4 and refuse to boot up? Mine does!
Have you tried the suggested Dell method of removing RAM to find the bad stick? I Have!
Does your computer, even with no RAM in it still indicate that same error code? Mine does!

Well good! For a limited time only, I have the solution to your problem! That’s right, turn that paper weight into a super great! (Huh?)

Unplug it. Wait 30 seconds. Plug it back in. Try turning it on again. It should:

1. Boot up fine! (this means your RAM is A-OK, and that the error codes are just indicative of the fact that your computer is a piece of crap. Duh! You got a Dell!)

2. Error code again. (Take out a RAM stick and put a different one in and repeat the process of unplugging etc. till it boots up)

3. Error code different. If you hear beeps and just have a 1 showing, it means you took them all out and unplugged it and waited 30 seconds (or two minutes or longer) and then plugged it back in. That’s what I finally did. It accomplished some sort of hard reboot or something and cleared it’s memory or whatever. Torn it off, throw in some RAM (one stick if you don’t mind), and plug her in and boot her up. Should work unless you threw in the bad RAM.

If all this fails it means that all your RAM went bad at once. If so, please comment so i can know there’s someone out there more hated by their ocursed Dell minion than me!

So, again, the lesson here is that Dell sucks and no one should ever buy a Dell ever and that I hate Dell, and that I will never buy one again (and have put my money where my mouth is and although I have 10 Dells in my home, my most recent purchase was an HP).

Tags: computers, Dell, dell sucks, Dell Wars, Fixing, hardware, Troubleshooting
Posted in autobiographical, hardware | 2 Comments »

“Dell Wars” Episode VII – Death of an Empire

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Hey, wait, I thought I was done with Dell? Especially after the first six episodes? Yeah, and I thought Lucas was done making movies, but they keep coming, and it just keeps getting worse.

So, yesterday I decided to buy a new laptop. I’m recording an online Lecture series with IUPUI CSCI Dept. and I need a laptop to do it on. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Surely… surely, he didn’t buy a Dell… right?” At this point, you’re probably expecting me to say “wrong”, but actually, I’m not a fracking idiot. I’ll never give Dell another red cent in my entire life. I bought an HP.

Modest 15.4″ Screen

4 GB Ram

2.1 GHZ AMD Turion X2 Ultra 64

Vista Home Premium

ATI RADEON HD 3200 Graphics card

WiFi

LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling DVD Burner

SD-MS/Pro-MMC-XD media card reader

Removable Remote Control thingamabob (so I can use it as a TV)

Lots of lovely little ports some of which I don’t know the name for (USB/eSATA/HDMI/Network/phone/monitor/etc)

So, I get this thing home. Get my wifi network back up and running, and low an behold, aparently this pissed off my Dell.

She must have gotten jelous of the new girl in town, because when I walked in the room after getting my lappy all up and running, the dell was deader than a doornail.

She won’t even turn on. She just sits there with front panel error codes indicating she has bad memory. No bios screen, nothing. Just a number 3 and a number 4 lit up in green, as if to say, “Fine! I’m leaving!”.

I even ripped out all the memory and hit the power button to see if it would give me the correct error codes for “no memory found”, but nope. It still claims to have memory, but claims the memory is bad.

Well, guess what Dell? That’s BS! You were going to remain my primary, but now it really does look like I’m abandoning you to the cobwebs of irrelevancy! Good ridance you over priced piece of crap! You never worked right in the first place!

If I didn’t think there was a chance I could fix it (probably have to buy a new motherboard, this will be it’s third one) I’d take it out back and beat the snot out of it with a baseball bat.