Category: Seriously?

CrashPlan Still Sucks

Backup software that tells you it’s backing up your stuff when it isn’t SUCKS.

Seems CrashPlan still hasn’t fixed the wonderful feature I ran into a couple years ago where you hit a magic limit and your backups stop working…. while their software continues to send you weekly emails telling you that your stuff is all backed up.

It makes perfect sense that they need to use resources (RAM) to keep track of whether or not a file that’s being tracked has changed. If you have a large number of files, that can mean a LARGE amount of resources.

Their software has a default limit on the amount of RAM it will use to track changed files. No problem with that.

When their software hits that limit, and cannot allocate the memory it needs, it crashes, writes a restart.yyyy-mm-dd_hh.mm.ss.log file in the folder where the binary is installed. Then it restarts… without telling you it’s crashed. I DO have a problem with that.

In fact, this morning, when I needed to restore something, I discovered that I have a problem with another machine that hit that limit a few months ago. No, the most recent version of CrashPlan does NOT detect that this has happened. I’d complain and ask that they do this again, but they obviously don’t care enough about the issue to have done anything about it.

Other than that problem I like using CrashPlan, so I’ve written some scripts that run weekly that let me know if this has happened. I suggested that they needed to do this, but, at least in the most recent version I’m aware of, they have not done anything to address the problem.

AHS FINALLY Gets It Right

So, we’ve gotten to the first week of 2019, and I can finally lay to rest the American Home Shield service request that started last June.

Seems that any form of contact with AHS other than social media is useless. After getting two more bills telling me I owed them for an extra service call they never made, and getting no response from the person that had finally gotten the HVAC fixed, I went after them on Twitter and Facebook, and got responses on both within a couple of hours.

I was told the exact same thing, pretty much word for word (must have been reading the same script), about it being fixed and I’d see my account corrected online in a couple of days… but this time they actually did it!

So, fingers crossed, we’re actually done. System is working. And if I go back and look at the amount of time I’ve invested getting to this point, I would have come out way ahead had I worked those hours and paid for it myself.

Surprise, surprise, surprise…

All is not well with American Home Shield.

Huge surprise, right?

So, after the hour on the phone with customer support, where they claimed to have fixed the problem with their billing, weeks later I get another email telling me my account is past due for the bogus service fee. Later the same day, I get another invoice in the mail telling me my account is past due.

How many weeks does it take for them to correct their billing error? Will it ever happen? Not holding my breath.

Rather than waste hours on the phone with customer service again,, I’ve reached out to the one person that seemed to be able to do things correctly at AHS. I’m hoping this will work.

And all was good until…

The 4th of Dec. when I get the email telling me my account is about to be terminated for late payment on a service call. Hmm, only service call I had was when this AC nonsense started back in June.

Thirty five minutes listening to the same twenty second long clip of classical music, so horribly over modulated and distorted it was painful to hear (I may never listen to that particular piece for the rest of my life).

Finally get a human, back on hold while the “look up my account”. They must be using mid-eighties vintage IBM PC’s for it to take this long. Ok, ten or fifteen minutes later I’m told that when somebody reopened the incomplete service call they’d repeatedly closed, even though the work hadn’t been done, they put it in as a new service call, triggering the service charge.

About which I was never informed. So, they can add charges to your account, but the system never sends any notification to the customer so they can pay it? Never got a warning, no payment reminder. Not a word, until today when their system decided it was ready to terminate my account because I didn’t pay that service fee. Who wrote that system?

It only took another ten minutes listening to very annoying, but thankfully low volume, undistorted, generic, instrumental background music (thank you for not ruing any more classics for me) until the nice lady filled out the form telling requesting the charge be removed from my account.

I’m withholding final judgement until I see if it actually gets fixed.

How does one stay in business when providing such wonderful service?

Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

Hoping it’s not a train…

So, the nice person at American Home Shield called back today, as promised. Turns out the parts Total Air Care told me were on order twelve days ago, on 9/7, were not ordered until today. I didn’t ask if they were ordered before or after AHS spoke to Total Air Care (I’m betting on after). Supposedly, it’ll take two to three days for the parts to arrive and then Total Air Care will call to schedule installation.

The person helping me at AHS is going contact me again next week to verify Total Air Care has actually scheduled installation.

Then The Next Day, AHS Calls

They’re following up on my social media contact. They want to know if this has been resolved. LOL, right…

I explain that Total Air Care responded yesterday that parts were on order and they’d contact me as soon as they were in.

AHS says, we haven’t ordered any parts for you.

I say, Total Air Care told me they’re not allowed to order part and you’ve got to order them.

AHS says, we’ll call them and get back to you.

We’re hoping to get the AC working in time for the heating season.

We’ll Be Reaching Out To You Within 48 Hours

At least that’s what the email said.

Waited another ten days, then replied to the email claiming we had no coverage and got a prompt response:

YES SIR, THIS PART ORDERED, THOUGH, DUE TO THE WEATHER ,THE PART WILL MORE THEN LIKELY BE IN STOCK IN 2-3 DAYS IN WHICH TIME WE WILL CALL YOU AND GET YOU ON THE SCHEDULE AT OUR VERY EARLIEST AVAILABLE APPOINTMENT

Uh-huh…

So TAC Called To Schedule, Right?

Well, no. Surprised. No.

Spent hours mired in the AHS phone system. Got dropped multiple times. Was told the wait was long and asked for a call-back.

The service rep was nice, but said nothing when I mentioned we’ve been waiting over three months to get this fixed. Should I assume that’s their normal and not worth comment? I was again told they’d contacted Total Air Care and they’d get the system fixed. Won’t hold my breath.