Wednesday, July 9, 2008

John Hood post 9 July

John Hood of Mediamax/The Linkup posted the following message on the last blog entry about the closure of the service:

---quote begins
I just wanted to apologize on behalf of our entire team for the demise of The Linkup. We started this company a year ago to prevent the closing of the Streamload service which was the desire of management after the split of Streamload into MediaMax and Nirvanix. If we hadn't the service would have been gone a long time ago. It started off on a bad note because, due to operator eror, while the company was still Streamload millions or files were deleted. Still we perservered. We built what I think is an excellent product. The problem is not the product but transferring files from MM to The Linkup. There was a 45% failure rate as we tried to upload files to the new product. Therefore we felt it was best to end this situation now. We could have pushed forward but felt that continuing out cry over lossed files would dog us forever. This would hamper sales in the future and prevent us from raising more capital. We didn't feel it was right to resume billing customers considering the massive loss of data. (Yes, PayPal was still sending us money for subscriptions but we stopped directly charging credit cards April 26th)
So as much as we'd like to continue present circumstances prevent it.

Again, my apologies, I wish you success in downloading your files.

Best Regards,

John Hood
---quote ends

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

And this is the reply to my email regarding refunds for annual subscription fees:
---
Thanks for writing. I'm sorry to hear that you haven't been able to access your files. I wish I could give you a refund, but we simply have no money. In fact, the company is several hundred thousands of dollars in debt and will soon be filing for bankruptcy. I thnk you only recourse is to join the company's other creditors in bankruptcy court.

Thanks,

John Hood
Director, Customer Support
The Linkup

Unknown said...

Well, I guess that answers that question! Ugh.

Anonymous said...

I could be wrong but this is a business strategy. It's one of the ways a business company can get rid of clients they don't like without a chance of getting sued. Business would form a new company with the same offers as the old company, if not better, and fail on meeting what was promised in delivery, especially with their support. The service would decline until at the point where they had to close down. What happens to their clients? They have no business with them anymore. It's more apparent with the fact that they changed the company's name twice whether their clients wanted them to or not. I wouldn't trust any company where these people were hired. I wouldn't trust Nirvanix either, if every any one of you are thinking of using Nirvanix now.

Anonymous said...

Gotta love the conspiracy theories that are rolling out now. Did it ever cross your mind that with the way the economy is, there will be a lot of businesses closing? I don't know where you live, but since when does a customer or client have any input whatsoever into the structuring or naming of a company they deal with? If that's the case, I want to change my car insurance company's name to something that I like.

I'm sorry to see them go (along with my files), but it's pretty much what most people here have been wanting all along anyway even if they won't admit it. RIP Streamload/MediaMax/The Link Up.

Anonymous said...

I never said the clients have any input in the change of names. My point is that changing of names and not meeting what was promised to the consumers is part of the strategy. Denying the connection with Nirvanix is also part of the plan.