Moving over to Linkup - watch out non-paying users you could lose your files

Thanks to everyone, and in particular WillTRiker, for keeping this blog going.

Great to see John Hood is a regular poster, responding to people's concerns here. Nice to get requests from you for adding links to help people using the blog, but may I suggest MediaMax looks to its own blog (comments still disabled) and poor communications at the same time.

Which is the issue that prompts me to come back today. I follow what's going on as comments are posted and hear that many people have not yet received a notification email from MediaMax. Mine has just arrived, so I'm posting it below. Like some people who have commented here, I am concerned that the switch over is to take place next week and I'm only being informed now.

It is an utter disgrace to read that free Mediamax subscribers need to upgrade by 25 April: "Otherwise, your account will be deleted and all your files will be lost."

Hasn't MediaMax learned a thing about the misery it causes when it loses people's files?

Anyway, the latest poll presents some other options, so give your view. For the record, the last poll showed that in January 70% of voters had extreme problems with MediaMax, 16% significant problems, 9% rare problems and 5% no problems.

This is the email I've just received. I'll join in with posting my comments on the switch over here later.

Luzo.

---MediaMax email received 18 April (ie one week before free subscribers will lose all their files)

We have some exciting news to share! We will be launching a major upgrade to MediaMax this month. With this release, we're going to be renaming our service to "The Linkup" (www.thelinkup.com). The Linkup supports all of the current functionality of MediaMax, but also has some exciting new features.

The basic info you need to know:

"The Linkup": MediaMax will be renamed to "The Linkup" on April 25. The new URL will be www.thelinkup.com and we're expecting that you'll love the new service and features. You can check out a preview now at:

http://www.thelinkup.com/

Current subscribers: If you are currently a paying subscriber to MediaMax, you don't need to do anything. Your account will automatically be moved from MediaMax to The Linkup before the end of the month. All files that you uploaded to MediaMax after July 1, 2007 will be automatically moved to The Linkup. If you'd like to move additional files, please select them here using the "mover" tool:

http://www.thelinkup.com/mover

We'll process requests made using this tool once per day through the end of this month. You can use this tool more than once if you forgot some files the first time.

Current non-paying users: If you are not currently a paying subscriber to MediaMax, you need to upgrade your account before April 25 to be included in the move. Otherwise, your account will be deleted and all your files will be lost. Click here to upgrade your MediaMax account:

Upgrade now:

http://www.mediamax.com/Brands/MediaMax/home/pricing_plan.aspx

The Linkup Prices: Effective April 25, we will be increasing the prices of all of our premium subscriptions, but, in addition to the increased stability and new features that The Linkup provides, we are also removing bandwidth limits on all accounts, so there will be no more bandwidth "overage" charges (for personal, non-commercial use only). For example: $4.95/mo subscribers will now be paying $5.95/mo; $9.95/mo subscribers will now be paying $11.95/mo. Your MediaMax subscription will be automatically moved to a The Linkup subscription that is closest to what you currently pay. Additional subscription details will be available on The Linkup web site.

That's it! If you're currently a paying subscriber, there is nothing for you to do (except for selecting extra files that you'd like to have moved). For additional information please visit our blog: http://mediamaxblog.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading, and we're looking forward to having you at The Linkup!

MediaMax & The Linkup Support Team

support@mediamax.com
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Processing Delays revisited

The last entry on the MediaMax blog dates from march 6, but that problem was solved even though their blog hasn't been updated to reflect that. However, since the last 2 days it has reared it's ugly head again. For the last 2 days hardly any uploads will show up in your account and for the very few uploads that do there isn't any pattern noticeable. Don't bother re-uploading the file either as experience has shown it will not improve your chance of seeing it popup in your account so we can only sit tight, wait, and hope MediaMax figures out where our uploads go and can fix it without having us to re-upload all files that haven't shown up so far.

We're also, again, at countdown for V6 beta testing which should start the 15th if memory serves ... if it's not postponed again that is.

Uploading problems continue

Mediamax has struggled for the past several weeks with uploads and processing which were originally addressed to an uptick in upload traffic, but later reported to be caused by a database error which they hoped to have fixed soon.

Since around midday yesterday (CET) the upload system seem to have collapsed totally with upload speed being only a fraction of what people used to get and almost always sooner or later dropping to near zero before the upload crashing altogether. I have not notice an entry about this on MediaMax own blog about this also and seeing V6 beta has been delayed and we still have to muddy around with V5 it would be a good thing if they could patch up the system a little at least.