I've been using an online backup service for many years now. I got introduced to the subject by Mozy, later to be acquired by EMC. They used to give everyone 2Gb of data free (they still do). When it finally became time to back up more than just 2Gb, I wanted to go on Mozy's paid program, but their software simply didn't work, and did not manage to back up more than 4Gb of my data. (they probably fixed it by now)
So I looked elsewhere, and found carbonite. They had unlimited backup for ~$4 a month. Same as Mozy, but actually working. Installed, turned it on, paid the annual subscription, and became a happy camper.
3 lovely years passed, where I even got the chance to restore once, and it was well worth the money spent (not to mention peace of mind).
My amount of data grew gradually, until one day not too long ago, it seemed like a good idea to get an additional hard drive. I went out and got a new hard drive, external this time (it was on special). I connected it to my computer and moved some data to it. Then I went in carbonite and found out that they won't back up data on the new drive because they don't work with USB drives. Say what? Why do you guys care what hardware I'm using? What am I supposed to do now, just not use the drive, or perhaps make sure all my important data is on the other drives? A bit of snooping around to find out that this weird policy doesn't exist in any other online service. Time to talk to Carbonite, my good old backup provider, and ask them if they can cut me some slack.
I wrote a letter to Carbonite's support, asking them to make an exception, because my new drive was just as important as my other drives. They said no. I wrote another letter saying "listen, guys, I really need to backup my data and I really like your service, but if you won't let me protect all of my data, then we cannot do business together. Please refund what's left of my annual subscription (more than half)".
This is the response I got back:
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Customer SupportDate: Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:58 AMSubject: User incident report [Incident: 110125-001173]To:Response (Leena G.)01/26/2011 05:58 PMHello and thank you for contacting Carbonite Customer Support.We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused to you. At present, Carbonite only backs up local internal hard drives. For more details, please click the link below.External, Network and USB Drives: http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1386Also, please ensure that if you delete/move a file from your computer, Carbonite will schedule the file to be deleted within thirty days. This gives you some time if you realize you deleted the wrong file. For more details, please click the link below.Retention of Deleted Files: http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1402Additionally, we request you to please review our refund policy at: http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1496As stated during our purchasing process, when selecting 'Confirm' you agreed to Carbonite's Terms of Use and acknowledged that you were aware of Carbonite's Refund Policy. We also give users the opportunity to run our free trial to try before they buy.If you are having difficulty using Carbonite, please let us know what the issue is and we will be happy to assist you.Please let us know if you need additional assistance.Sincerely,Leena G.Carbonite Customer Supportwww.carbonite.comBack it up. Get it back.
For those of you not familiar with American English, let me translate:
Bottom line: Carbonite could have allowed me to cancel my service, and could have refunded my 20 or 30 bucks, because who in their right mind would not allow a person to own a USB drive nowadays? They could have saved me the time of writing this post, and save themselves the embarrassment of getting a bad review from an old faithful customer.Dear Customer,Go F yourself.Had you read our full TOS when you signed up with our service, you would have realized that you're making a mistake because if you decide to buy a USB drive, we would not back it up for you. Further more, we were nice enough to tell you upfront that if you're stupid enough to sign up to our service even after we told you all this, that you won't see a dime back. This is why it's called ann(u)al subscription.True, you signed up with us 3 years ago, when USB external drives weren't as popular, and yes, you've been extending our service every year since, but hey - there was a checkbox there saying that you agree to everything, so take responsibility for your actions.Just between you and us, you have about $30 left on your subscription. You've been our customer for 3 years now, so what's $30 among friends? Imagine you took us on a night out, or find some other way to live with the loss.
Mental note: never ever refuse a refund to a customer who is not happy with the product and is giving it back.
P.S. I am on CrashPlan's trial now. They are 10% through backing up my data. If it completes before my 30 day trial is over, I will switch over to them. I'm losing $30, but my data is too important to be left for chance.
2 comments:
I signed up for 3 years of Carbonite. I have now had two instances in two weeks of EVERY file in every directory be wiped off my hard drive after a Carbonite 'backup' which they insist is not possible. Well, last Saturday it happened while I was working and during the backup. So now I have been asked to uninstall and not use for a month to test if this problem still occurs. So far it hasn't but they have made it totally clear that this simply can not be their system. And they've assured me that through offshore support, online support I had to wait an hour for and never through phone support because the one time I waited...they managed to answer and I was 28th in line. One hour later? 24th in line.
I paid for three years in advance...let's hope I get my money back because I am beyond unimpressed!
Barbara, I'm sorry to hear that.
Sounds like you're worse than I am - I'm only stuck with like 8 months worth of subscription. If I were you, I'd dispute the credit card charge, if you still can.
Otherwise, you should probably write your own blog post about your experience. If you do that, and let me know, I'll put a link up from this post to yours.
Carbonite used to work fine 3 years ago. Based on your story, mine and others', it currently sounds like they're falling apart. To be honest, their technology never felt very solid on the client side, but since I'm a software engineer I felt like I could handle it.
At the bottom line, remember that it's your most precious data at stake here. You don't want to be fighting with Carbonite while your HD decides to die, so you may want to initially sign up for a trial account with one of the others, and possibly eventually write off Carbonite as money down the drain if you lose the war for getting your money back (my CrashPlan backup still has 20 days to go, they say, but looks promising).
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