How to Lose A Customer in 7 Seconds or WTF, Mozy?

Ah, Mozy. I first signed up with you a few years ago, when it was basically between you and Carbonite. Almost immediately, you saved my bacon (or, more specifically, a couple dozen gigs of photos and music) from a hard drive crash. Not long after that, I laughed at the poor Carbonite users, their backups trashed by a combination of faulty hardware and lack of cross data center replication.

But that was then, and this is now. Hard drives are cheap, bandwidth is plentiful, and everyone is doing "cloud stuff". So how do you respond to the flocks of competitors? Lowering prices? Adding innovative new features? (Yeah, backing up to local hard drives is a good new feature, but hardly one I'd call innovative.) No, not you! Instead you not only drop the unlimited option, you also raise prices!

I'm currently backing up about 75G of data from a single PC (man, those high megapixel cameras can crank up the file size!) This means the price for me doubled from about $50 to $100 per year. And what do I get for that extra $50? Nothing. Nothing at all. I can't run it on Linux or back up to friends machines for free, live CrashPlan. I don't get to keep my costs down around $50, like Carbonite. I can't sync my backup set between multiple machines, like Livedrive. I can't play my music or view my photos online or on mobile devices, like SugarSync. I get nothing.

I've never been a big fan of paying something for nothing, so farewell Mozy. I've chosen to go with CrashPlan. The browser based file access, weekly status reports, and cross platform support hit all of my needs at the right cost. Although, to be fair, I never would have bothered to find CrashPlan if Mozy hadn't decided to shoot themselves in the foot. I'd still be giving Mozy my money, for fewer features. I guess that puts things in a different light.

Mozy, you may be doing your best to bleed customers, but your sacrifice shall not go completely unappreciated. As a formerly happy, but now happily former customer of yours, you have my gratitude.