Yev from Backblaze here -> That sounds very strange. I've asked our ops team and they said if you can provide the serial number of the drive you have we can track it. Would you be able to write in a support ticket w/ the serial number of the drive you bought so I can personally flag it and investigate? Once done you can write the ticket # here and I'll follow up with the team -> https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/requests/new.
Yev from Backblaze here -> we LOVE this series (and so do a lot of folks in the industry) - Drive Stats Guru Emeritus Andy did retire, but we have a new team that's adding some interesting observations and data breakdowns into the mix.
For transparency to others here, here's what happened:
I submitted a support request and separately a GDPR request for my information and removal. I let the legal team at Backblaze know what happened as well by e-mailing legal@.
- The support request auto-responded with "We will respond to your support request (<insert ticket number here>) within one day." That was 21 days ago. No response.
- The legal team stated that my information has never been sold to 3rd parties. Strange unless Backblaze is operating its own AI cold calling en masse and then refused to complete my GDPR request of telling me the data it had collected on me. They refused to acknowledge that I had gotten an AI cold call
So no. This is frankly a BS path forward. Nobody at Backblaze as far as I can tell is taking this seriously
Yev from Backblaze here -> Interestingly we thought about this kind of thing. That's partially why we left the link "naked" instead of hyperlinking text and added alternative instructions underneath it for the password reset to give security-minded folks a way to take the action without clicking anything.
Yev from Backblaze here -> I'm sorry to hear that was the case and that you were affected by the fires in LA. It's true that Groups may not be required depending on what you were trying to do, but I'm saddened to hear that your experience with support was less than ideal. If you can send me your ticket number, I can have support management review the ticket.
Ticket# 1115339. BTW, your support and your backups are good. The issue isn't support or backups. I think this aspect of your product is excellent.
However, if I may presume, from the user experience, I get the feeling that the user portal has not gotten as much attention as the rest of the offerings. I get how that can happen, yet, as a user, nobody wants to have what I call a "DMV experience".
I should be able to buy licenses and easily assign them to group members, take them back, reassign them, etc. As a practical matter, if I already paid for a license before forming a Group, why make a user delete it, then ask for a refund and buy the same license again.
Even worse, why ask the administrator of a group to let group members reinstall the application and login with the administrator's credentials to be able to grab an unused license? So, I have to give account admin credentials to a group member for they to have access to an unused license?
The reason I enabled "Business Groups" was what you say on your docs page:
"The Backblaze Groups feature lets you manage, pay for, and administrate several users. Groups allow several people to have individual accounts that all fall under one credit card and renew on the same date. If the Group is managed, the administrators also have access to manage user's accounts, create restores, and perform any action a user can typically perform on their account. Groups is a great feature for all sizes of business or families who want to be able to manage payment for multiple members."
I was also told during a chat session that all I had to do was enable Business Groups and I could then assign licenses as needed. I was told that enabling Groups was just a checkbox that enabled the administrative portion of things and I would be able to manage licenses just as well.
On this basis I formed a group and added people to it.
There are other issues.
For example, the login seems to have a 30 minute timeout (or whatever it is). If I want to monitor a backup I have to login again every single time I go to check on it.
On the Users & Computers page I cannot see the backup status of the computers in the group. I have to click on "Details" for each user one at a time. If I have 10 computers in that group, it would be painful.
Why does Preferences have a Delete Backup function? That's not a preference, that belongs in the Overview page within each backup information box. Or, better yet, a "Manage Backups" page with a simple table where you can clone, restore, rename, get details on, etc. for each backup, including perhaps seeing group assignments.
Etc.
This is why I say this probably did not get a lot of attention. I wonder how much usability testing was done on this? For example, I can't imagine a user who wants to delete a backup immediately thinking "Oh, yes, I need to go to Preferences".
Understood, thank you for the context. One of the items we're working on right now is revamping the web console which does need some TLC as you've mentioned. If you'd like me to re-up the ticket, I'm happy to give support the heads up if you're still in need - and I've let our product team know about the issue you had with the UX.
Well, it would be nice to be able to transfer a license to the group I formed. Not being able to do that is a deal-breaker as far as I am concerned. I am not providing admin credentials to group members. The only other path is cancelling the license, requesting a refund, adding a credit card for group purchases (it looks like it can't use the existing saved card) and explicitly buying a new license for the group.
If you can get that transferred over to the group, I am happy for now (because I don't have to devote clock cycles to this). Beyond that, I hope you fix it with a focus on UX.
Love that! I think I re-shared your tweet about it a few days ago! I've been kinda staring at it on a loop on my monitor, fun to watch the balls bouncing around :D
Yev from Backblaze here -> you're welcome! Glad you like and we also wish they did! That's one of the reasons we started doing it, we wanted to know :D
