Unsolicited support cases

[cpt_paranoia]

In the relatively short time I’ve had the MyCloud, I’ve experienced a few problems with it, and posted threads here and got some help.  Or I’ve figured out for myself how to get around the problem (e.g. my Twonky FAQ thread).

Now, whilst I’ve never contacted Support directly, I’ve now had three cases raised by them ,and email conversations.  The first was regarding the woes with Twonky (as per the FAQ), the second was a Twonky follow up, asking for a debug log to be sent to WD, and the most recent is regarding the poor transfer rate on the ‘USB3.0’ port.  The latter was just me posting my findings of copy speeds to confirm someone else’s problem.  In the last two cases, I’ve responded that I didn’t need any further help personally, but that I though that there were issues that WD might like to go away and consider; for instane, being a bit more, let’s say ‘realistic’ about the performance of the USB3.0 port in the sales and product documentation. Expectation management, shall we say.

Having said that the USB speed wasn’t an issue to me, as I don’t use it, the next email I received was offering me a refund if I was unhappy with the perfomance of the MyCloud.  Yes, there are aspects of the MyCloud that I am unhappy with, and that don’t tally with the ‘1-2-3’ simplicity of the box specification, but I now have it working something like a basic NAS and media server, and I’m fairly happy.  Admittedly, I’m a perfectionist, so I expect things to live up to their spec, and will moan if they don’t.  And I’m an electronic engineer with experience of building hardware/software systems, and know I’d be unhappy if the MyCloud was a product I’d been involved with…

I don’t use the remote access to MyCloud because it incorporates known security vulnerabilities, and my internet uplink rate is probably not good enough to stream the media I have on my device.

I don’t use the USB port for a backup disk, or use Safepoints because it’s slow, and I don’t have a USB drive big enough to act as a single mirror, and I have my own backup process which works (whereas Safepoint seems pretty flaky, judging by reports here).

I don’t use iTunes server or TimeMachine because I don’t use iTunes (even worse than MyCloud…), and don’t own a Mac.

I do use it as a NAS, for which it seems to be working.

I do use it for the Twonky Media Server, because, in spite of the MyCloud, I’ve managed to get that working is a stable manner.

I think I paid £149 for the 4TB drive.  That was pretty cheap, so I think I’ve got value for my money.

Whilst WD Support haven’t really been much use, at least someone seems to be monitoring threads on this forum, and raising support cases, and contacting me about them, and trying to help, even if the only help they think they can offer is a refund to what appears to be an unsatisfied customer.  So WD ought to be commended for the unsolicited supoort calls.

On the other hand, living up to my moniker, I do wonder if they think I’m a bit too negative about their product on this forum, and want to stop me using the MyCloud, and stop posting here…  Whilst I am rather negative, I usually try to help people with their problems. Just that one way I try to help is by trying to shame WD to do a better job, by continuing to point out the shortcomings of their product…

[JAC70]

A year-and-a-half of shaming doesn’t seem to have motivated WD to fix the issues with this unit, but we can always hold out the hope. :)  

I use mine as a basic NAS for media streaming, and after much warranty-voiding tweaking have achieved reasonable performance and stability.  This process is, unfortunately, beyond the abilities of the majority of users and is why I actively discourage anybody from buying one.  It is also worth mentioning that the only reason I didn’t return this unit is because of the support of the members of this forum.

My wish would be for WD to release a simplified version of the firmware, with no Cloud access, backups, iTunes and especially no media indexing.

[SectorGZ]

I have support cases logged also. I was contacted by WD Support, I think over this thread

WD Support made some offer … I declined, for good reasons, and now they want me to take a survey as to “How they responded to my Support Case”. … I never made one!!!, they contacted me.

As I do appreciate WD Support and anything they can do to help us My Cloud users get these devices working properly, not vulnerable to attacked (my MC has been offline for over a month), firmware that works properly, etc… Both of my devices are nothing more than an external HDD’s now, definately not what they were bought for.

Please do not take credit for answering Support Cases that you created … that is unprofessional and lacks integrity.

Please just fix the devices with proper firmware and OS, Why is this such an issue?

[dubie]

Hey Capt_Paranoia I don’t think your posts have been negative at all and personally I have found them to be very useful.

I have two 4Gb MyClouds each with its own 4Gb MyBook connected to back up my data. Over the past year or so I have been down the road with firmware upgrades that wrecked my setup. Luckily I have not lost any data. I’ve spent the last two months repairing the MyClouds by downgrading the firmware and hacking into it to stop the constant scanning. I’ve deleted all the hidden files and directories. I updated the samba, all using tips and info from this forum. Only now do I have a working NAS setup that is achieving regular and reliable safe points. This has taken pretty much all of my spare time (and more) so I guess most people would simply have given up. I wouldn’t blame them. Whenever I read advice on this forum that people should check and update their firmware for the MyCloud it makes me want to scream!

[Sousa]

Just a few hours after my post ( http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Please-don-t-mind-me-WD-I-m-just-another-unsatisfied-customer/td-p/864461) I got an email from one of the community moderators informing me that my post has been escalated to the technical support department.

I gladly acknowledge WD staff’s eagerness to promptly address issues raised by their customers but… I didn’t ask for any support! In fact, my post is as generic as it can be, only intended to voice my general dissatisfaction regarding the non-working features of the MC product as denounced by so many other users for a surreally long period of time. Nowhere in my post is to be found any specifics as to the problems I’m having so im intrigued as to what WD’s tech department approach will be. And since I believe that my poor experience with MC results from a defective product (hopefully only for the firmware/software part) and not from my specific gear setup, my post was only intending to appeal to WD’s integrity by acknowledging to their community of users the existence of “known issues” and the planned measures and timings to tackle them.

I acquired this consumer’s product for all its announced bells and whistles. If I would have wanted a pure NAS I would have made a different pick, so I don’t want any crippling solution for this product obtained by tampering its entrails, just to feel that I didn’t just paid for a brick with a shinny blue LED on its front.