Offering Exchange

My Cloud Home - Personal Cloud Storage My Cloud Home
1

This is for WD, not for the community. I am posting here, because I seem to have run out of options. Your tech support is terrible. They are asking to do a remote session on my computer and are calling my home phone over this issue, which was explained in great detail three times so far. They are not responding to my emails in a timely manner, and they don’t seem to understand what I am saying. Up until last week, WD was my first choice for data storage hardware. You have been slipping ever since I tried to setup the My Cloud Home to do what I want.

I am going to explain the situation and my desired resolution one more time. You have till Friday to take care of it, because I cannot wait any longer. I have been out of my NAS for over a week, and if I cannot have it restored by around the middle of next week, it is going to cause me serious problems. Keep in mind that my first support request was sent almost a week ago.

This is my problem: I bought a device on Amazon titled “My Cloud 4TB Home Personal Cloud Storage”. Before purchasing it, I confirmed on your website that the My Cloud device has NAS capabilities including NFS, SMB, and FTP protocols as well as SSH service. When the device arrived, I attempted to set these up, only to discover that it is a My Cloud Home, not a My Cloud, and it does not have any of these capabilities and further cannot even function properly without an internet connection. I was looking for a NAS, not for cloud storage that takes up space in my home while offering the same functionality as a remote service. When I researched the device I thought I was getting, there was nothing indicating that the Home device was any different from the My Cloud without the Home.

I don’t want to try to return the device to Amazon for a variety of reasons. First, you are listed as the vendor, and it is not Amazon’s fault that the listing advertised the devices as a My Cloud, not a My Cloud Home. Second, it not Amazon’s fault that your web site is not clear that these are two totally different products, not just two products in the same line. Third, I don’t have time to wait for a return through Amazon and then get the real My Cloud. Fourth, you don’t appear to be offering the My Cloud 4TB on Amazon.

What I would like to do is trade the My Cloud Home 4TB that I got on Amazon for a My Cloud 4TB. Your price for the My Cloud Home 4TB is listed on your site as $199.99. Your price for the My Cloud 4TB is listed as $179.99. It would be in your best interest to just do a direct exchange, and at this point I don’t care about the $20 difference.

If you are not willing to do this, then I will return the My Cloud Home 4TB to Amazon, and I will no longer be a WD customer. Your customer service has been so terrible that I have already priced out alternatives in anticipation of your failure to even attempt to resolve this issue in a timely manner. My best option seems to be a cheap single board computer with SATA and Gigabit ethernet along with a 4TB Seagate drive. If I cannot trust you to back the quality of your products, I cannot trust you with my critical data either.

You should also be aware that I am a college professor, and many of my family, friends, and students come to me for advice on technology purchases. In the past, I have generally recommended WD for data storage devices. If you are not willing to stand behind your quality though, I am not going to continue recommending your products.

Just in case you are interested in doing something about your abysmal tech support, my support numbers follow:

[Removed due to privacy policy] (Charlie)
[Removed due to privacy policy] (Christie)

(I have two, because I submitted a second support request when the first stopped responding for 48 hours. Also, I am almost certain the names are fake, because “Charlie” tried to call a few minutes ago, and my wife said he had a strong Indian accent. We will see what happens when he calls back.)

2

Can’t say I am surprised, but “Charlie” has not called back. He should have called almost an hour ago.

3

I have escalated your support request to the WD support management team. Someone should be in contact with you soon.

4

Perhaps you can also suggest to the WD support Management Team that they review the many comments on the forums here of your customers with similar frustrations over the My Cloud Home device and ask them to provide some reassurance that our concerns are being addressed as a priority.

5

Thank you. This is beyond frustrating at this point, and honestly it is not something that should be terribly difficult.

6

Yes, I am not the only one with this issue. I didn’t just blindly buy this without trying to do my research. The information provided and the very similar naming of such a different product are clearly a serious problem. When I first discovered this, I found a long list of people on these forums with very similar problems.

7

If they are saying we bought the wrong device then it’s due to poor/deceptive marketing naming of the device.
I agree Sir! This was a post that I made. I work in Technical Support for a large ISP.

  1. Very fast for me via Asus RT-AC68U. Using public folder I`m getting 112MB/s (896mbps). Super.
  2. Super quiet. Cannot even hear it even at full blast.
  3. That’s it.
    Other than that as a NAS it’s about as useful as Ann Frank’s drum kit.
    Negatives!
    “This isn’t NAS storage, this requires constant connection to the internet in order to manage your files and access your data.
    There is no direct access to the management interface on the device, it has no management interface, everything is managed via an online service that WD hosts.
    There are no shares on this device it cannot be used by anything that cannot run WD’s app so if you want to access files from a Linux box or your TV well tough luck…
    If you don’t have internet you can’t access your data.
    If WD decides to shutdown the service you can’t access your data.
    If WD decides that it doesn’t like you for some reason you can’t access your data.
    WD can access your data at any time, if you block the device from communicating with WD’s servers you can’t access your data.
    The device communicates also with 3rd party servers which do not belong to WD some hosted in India and China.
    This isn’t a storage server this is WD hosting their version of Google Drive at your expense with all the liabilities that come with it.”

If MCH has superior hardware over MC then they should seriously consider a firmware change to implement basic standard NAS features and everyone will be happy and will boost sales at the price.

Found on this forum.
• MyCloud Home has 1GB of RAM (instead of 256 MB in MyCloud)
• MyCloud Home has quad-core processor (instead of dual-core in MyCloud)
• MyCloud Home has a Realtek RTD1295PBCG A53 processor (instead of Mindspeed Comcerto M86261G12 in MyCloud)
• MyCloud Home use 1.4 GHz processor (instead of 650 MHz in MyCloud)
• My Cloud Home uses only HTTPS for access.
• My Cloud Home supports Microsoft Edge browser.

The ASUS-AC68U I`m using offers all these features and almost full NAS features using a hard disk via USB for free.

8

First, this has been resolved. Thank you for sending this to someone capable of understanding the issue and helping. My only wish is that the standard support had been this good in the first place. Still, I am satisfied with the resolution, and I am happy to say I am still a WD customer.

Second (in response to other posts here), I wouldn’t call the marketing and naming deceptive, as I don’t think it was intentional. It is true, however, that there is a clear problem with the naming of these devices. The Home brand is not merely a different line of the same product, like the Mirror is. It is a totally different product. It has completely different capabilities, and it is intended for a completely different user base. The naming does not make this clear, and that is a serious marketing problem.

It is true that the Home is not a NAS. It might be storage, and it might be connected to your network, but by that reasoning, the only device I have that is not a NAS is my Raspberry Pi 3 that is using netboot and has no SD card storage (and even that still has RAM and CPU registers and cache, which are all different kinds of short term storage).

For me, one of the killers is that you need an internet connection to use it. I did not see this stated anywhere, and I only learned about this from complaints on these forums. This is basically cloud storage with all of the limitations of remote cloud storage but it takes up space in your home.

Directed at WD: I wonder if maybe you could offer an alternative firmware for this device that will essentially turn it into a My Cloud? (I wonder how hard it would be to port the My Cloud firmware to the My Cloud Home…) As mentioned in the previous post, it has more memory and a significantly better processor than the My Cloud. Right now, there seem to be a lot of people with this device that expected it to have the same capabilities as the My Cloud. Offering a special firmware update that will convert to the same functionality as the My Cloud would be a good compromise. It would give many of your customers what they thought they were getting, and it would be cheaper than exchanging a bunch of devices or losing reputation and thus customers. And of course, those who like the current functionality won’t be presented with extra options they will never use.

9

It’s baffling that I need internet access to access something on my own LAN.

A hard drive in caddy on this router does more!

That is my biggest gripe & no samba, FTP or permissions etc

10

Yeah, that was the one that really got me. I do need NFS and SMB protocols for my uses (I run some Linux systems), and I have found SSH to be really handy for reorganizing. Lack of FTP would not be a deal breaker for me, but it is nice to have. I do understand that most people won’t need these though. I don’t understand why a storage device in my own home would not be usable without an internet connection.

12

The problem: I researched “My Cloud” because it was unclear that the Home was even a different product. The title of the product on Amazon was “My Cloud 4TB Home Personal Cloud Storage”. Given the search term “My Cloud”, Google did not bring up any results on the Home. I did indeed find some results on this forum, however, they were all for the My Cloud, not the My Cloud Home. I also found some information, including support information and device specifications on the My Cloud on WD’s website, but there was no mention that there was a Home product, or that it was totally different, on the pages I found. I naturally assumed that the visual differences between the product postings on Amazon were difference in version, nothing else, and there was no evidence suggesting otherwise. (“Actual product may appear different from the image” is practically cliche now days.)

After I attempted to setup the product, and could not find the options the forum and specifications ensured me existed, I Googled how to setup the My Cloud and discovered that what I had was a totally different product. At that point I was aware of the product difference, and that is when I started trying to figure out how to make the Home do what I wanted, which ended here on the WD forums in the My Cloud Home threads, where I learned that this device is not even close to a NAS and has none of the functionalities one would expect from a NAS.

The only research I may have shirked on was the Amazon reviews, but the complaints about not having NAS functionality were not even on the first page at the time. Had I read more than just the top few reviews, I might have discovered this before I bought it, but the fact is I should not have to read through pages of reviews to know that this product is not the same as the My Cloud.

I definitely agree that this is not typical for WD. I have bought many WD products in the past. I have taken apart old drives. WD products are typically very well designed and very high quality. WD does not take money saving shortcuts in their drives that many other manufacturers do.

I am not terribly surprised they have not pulled it though. It is easy to look at sales and profit figures and think a product is successful, when behind the scenes, every loyal customer that buys it is a lost customer in the long run.

I would love to see a special optional firmware update that will make it function like a My Cloud though, because the hardware on the Home is good, and optional firmware could resolve the problem far more cheaply than pulling the product entirely. And of course, for those who don’t know the difference and like how it currently works, they don’t have to learn anything new.

13

Sorry you got all confused and ill informed.but your first mistake was exploring Amazon for accurate information! As a long time online shopper, Amazon included, I take all reviews as being interesting, and when I read reviews of products I already have, it is very apparent a great majority of reviewers. are totally clueless as to what they are talking about. Most reviews are posted to complain, and most problems are written by users who haven’t even read or looked at the user manual, so no wonder they can’t get the darn thing to work

In addition, Amazon, like eBay, has external sellers who are selling older models of devices, but it is not always clear that is the case. It’s totally “Buyer Beware” territory. If I want to buy a pricey gadget, I know beforehand what I want before stepping into Amazon and elsewhere. Shopping at Best Buy can be even worse, since their sales people are also pretty darn clueless. Someone here said the My Cloud Home was being promoted by Best Buy as a NAS, and the successor to the earlier My Cloud!

Speaking of My Cloud as a name, ALL WD personal storage “clouds” are all named My Cloud and they are not even Clouds, since they are home based and not residing on some cloud server somewhere

Ah,. what’s in a name?. . . confusion, that’s what. Marketing departments are much to blame, and I know this, because for 30 years I was part of a marketing dept! There are plenty of clueless people there, too, as well as a few sharp ones.

14

I am not sure why you think it is appropriate to insult people here. You clearly did not read what I wrote. I was pretty clear that I looked up the product on WD’s website and read through their own product specification and forums. What would you search if you were looking at a product listed as “My Cloud 4TB Home Personal Cloud Storage”? Because “My Cloud Home” is not the first thing I think, when I see a product listed as “My Cloud 4TB…”, especially on a site that is well known for throwing in keywords like “Home” and “Personal” to get more search hits.

It does not surprise me that Best Buy or anyone else was advertising the My Cloud Home as a NAS in the My Cloud line. That is exactly what it looks like on the surface. There is no evidence on the packaging or really anywhere else that it is not a NAS, and being named after the My Cloud suggests that it is part of that product line. It easily follows that if the My Cloud and My Cloud Mirror are NAS devices, the My Cloud Home must also be. And the product looks like a sleeker, more advanced version of the My Cloud, and is even priced appropriately for being a higher end version of the device. I’ll bet no one at Best Buy even knew the My Cloud Home was not a better version of the My Cloud, because nothing about the product suggested otherwise. Looking at pricing and the packaging information, it looks like the My Cloud is the low end consumer product, the My Cloud Home is a more advanced home NAS solution, and the Mirror is the top end, high reliability solution. The front page of the website puts them in a different order, but if you look at the pricing and hardware specs, it still suggests the order above. Nothing says that the My Cloud Home is not a NAS like the other two though. It does not say that the My Cloud and the Mirror are NASs or that the Home is not. The descriptions of the products are very similar actually. What is true of one, according to WDs own description, is true of the others, except that the Home description includes a few more things. I spent several hours researching NAS devices, favoring WD, because I am familiar with their high quality. Despite that, I found nothing mentioning that the Home is different from the My Cloud. Only once I realized there was a significant difference was I equipped to learn what it was. If anything, maybe my mistake was trusting WD’s description of the devices, but being familiar with WD’s high quality, I did not expect WD’s own information to be so misleading.

I agree that the name “My Cloud” was totally inappropriate for the My Cloud and the My Cloud Mirror. “My NAS” probably would have been more appropriate. That would have left My Cloud open for the Home, which would have been a more accurate representation of the product, without associating it with something totally different. But with the My Cloud name taken, the Home should have been named something totally different, to avoid associating it with the actual NAS. Unfortunately, the inappropriate use of buzzwords in naming is practically seen as a “best practice” in marketing now, despite its penchant for causing problems for customers and harming company reputations.

Anyhow, I still hope they come up with a good resolution to this that can avoid alienating customers that thought the My Cloud Home was a NAS without causing any problems for customers who don’t even know what NAS is, and I think the best solution is an optional firmware update that turns the My Cloud Home into a legitimate NAS that works like the rest of the My Cloud products.

15

Nobody is insulting anyone here. I was siding with you and assuring you you were not the first confused by this fiasco.

Look, the low-end WD My Cloud products are in the Personal Cloud Storage product category and the higher end NAS products are in the Network Attached Storage product section (As found at the WD website under the Products tab).and this is where the true NAS products are.

I do not think firmware is the solution, because the hardware is likely quite different. The whole Home product line should be sent to the old electronics recycling center graveyard nearby where I took our CRT TVs and other junk of no use today…

Thankfully, I don’t have a Home device, and soon you will not either. Let’s leave it a that.

16

Ah, I see. Never mind that part then!

It’s pretty obvious I am not the only one, given the state of the My Cloud Home forum! I wish WD would realize that.

I am sure porting the firmware would take some work. I was just suggesting it might be cheaper than recalling or even just exchanging all of the Home line products that were bought with the expectation of being NAS products. If the hardware is so different that porting the firmware would not be economical, then I agree. (On a related side note, I wonder how hard it would be to stick Linux on a Home…)

I would love to eventually get one of the Pro or Expert devices, but they are out of my price range right now. Perhaps at some point in the future!

17

As far as I know all the MC devices run on Linux

Yes, the upper end My Clouds are nice. It so happens I have the model above the EX models called DL series. Over a year or so ago it was replaced by the top end PR series. I like mine a lot.

I have only media files stored on it; mostly music and videos, both of which I make my own. from my CDs, and DVDs, plus for over 12 years I have a subscription to a legit music download service called eMusic. Everything on the NAS is a copy of data I have stored on hard drives. So each is a backup of the other. I don’t use the My Cloud to back up my PC; it is strictly a server for home entertainment.

My DL2100 is a two 2bay/drive model (and 4100 models are 4bay/drive models) Depending upon how you plan to use it, and future storage needs you could select either configuration.

Anyway, nice chatting and good luck with the resolution with WD.

18

Yeah, mine will be used for backups of some files (not any whole computer) and as a media/shared storage device. I am also building a Raspberry Pi cluster, and I may use it to store the share for the root directory, if it is not to hard to setup. I will definitely used it for shared space for distributed applications designed to run on the cluster.

Have fun!