I received an email from Zoolz that gave me so much stress and frustration. They were discontinuing the Home Users Plan including the Lifetime user such as myself and only giving 14 days to retrieve the backup files.
The email was sent on 30 September 2020, maybe, because I read it in the wee hours of 1 October 2020. So, without giving too much consideration to their subscribers, they abruptly informed those Home Users to either retrieve all their files or opt for a discounted Basic Business Plan for 1 year and then will be paying a yearly fee after the discounted promo.
Update 1:
They will never answer to any of your queries, support tickets, both restore@zoolz.com and support@zoolz.com techies or wannabes or agents or people.
You are left to figure out ways on how to back up or retrieve your personal files in their servers. I mean, like myself, I really got stressed with the way they handled their so-called business issue brought about by the effects of the COVID-19 but they should have at least help or assist their Home Plan Users.
They were just waiting for them to upgrade to their Business Plan.
Good thing for me, I was fortunate to figure out on how to save most of the files especially in the Vault because they have two systems in their 1TB of storage plan, one is for the Cold Storage which will take forever to retrieve. Until now, I have not retrieve most of the files there. And then, the Vault Storage, where it was said to be retrieved easily. The only difference between the two, that I saw, is that the former has a Remote Restore option while the latter does not have.
So, with the Vault Storage files, what I did was performed the old method of viewing the photos, since these are important photos of our growing family, by right clicking on its preview and then saving it. Although, the file size was lower than the original size, at least, I was able to save memorable moments of our family. The quality of the pictures were lessened but it is more than enough to treasure such wonderful and historic family moments.
Then, for the .3gp and .mp4 and .zip files, it was just a simple click and wait for a few seconds and then the normal window for saving it in a location will be appearing, and then clicking the save button, to save it.
Update 2:
During the downloading of the files, I was able to figure out that I was able to save a zipped file of most of the photos of my wife which was what I remembered doing when I was backing up the files from Google Photos because we were already running out of space that time.
Update 3:
Unfortunately, when I upgraded to their Discounted Business Plan, all my vault files were gone. Although, I was able to download the files of my wife, the remaining 67.59GB of personal files were gone, specifically, the Vault Storage. I emailed their support last 3 October 2020, the day I also upgraded my plan.
And, this may sound fishy but they did reply. Today. That is, after I have paid and upgraded my Lifetime Home User Plan to their 1TB Business Plan. It is very obvious that they planned to force all their consumer clients especially those with Lifetime Home User Plans to pay and upgrade for a yearly plan. Why? Because they replied a day after I have availed of their Discounted Business Plan which has an original price of 199.99 dollars (Php 9,689.31) and yet I only paid 20 dollars (Php 968.98).
I have no choice because both me and my wife has backup precious files and most of the files are at risk already because it is located at their Cold Storage which means longer time of retrieval unlike their Vault Storage which will only take hours or days to retrieve.
Unfortunately, their servers are congested which was what was also detailed in their response on one of the service tickets I created. This is the result of the numerous requests of file retrievals brought about by their frustrating move of only giving 15 days notice for their consumer clients. So, regardless of whether the files are backup in the Vault Storage or Cold Storage, it will take days and not hours to retrieve it.
So, that’s 20 dollars at my end to retrieve those files. I have almost one year to retrieve those files and not renew anymore. I will be waiting in vain until I retrieved all those files. Hopefully, after 15 October 2020, their servers will not be congested anymore.
Update 4:
I got 4 email replies out of 6 email service tickets I have created.
Received an email regarding the Vault Storage data. Below is the exact email I received. You will notice that this maybe a template already but hopefully, the Vault data that it pertains to are really safe and secure.
Dear ,
Thank you for contacting Zoolz & BigMIND Technical Support.
First I would like to assure you that your Instant Vailt data is safe and secure. We’re aware that some users are having issues accessing their instant vault data after upgrading to business and working on solving this issue. Please expect this issue to be resolved soon and have access to your instant vault data.
Regards,
Bob Atkinson
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