David,
I have been reluctant to contact you because I know you are a busy man and I wanted to try to get help thru your normal channels before escalating this to you. I have tried and tried now to get things resolved, but I have just been amazed that no one will seem to address these issues with me. I will give you the case number (############) so you can pull your tickets there to see the history, but then give you my questions so it may be more clear.

1. Slow backup – I have been a customer for nearly 2 years now and at one point I had all my files backed up. I then upgraded to a new 1TB disk and in the process of this upgrade Carbonite thought I had a new system or something and started ALL over again backing up my files. So I figured maybe I did something wrong and would just live with it as it was making good time backing up the files. But then it hit a wall and was only backing up 1-2gig a WEEK and that was unacceptable.

2. Can’t contact – So with the slow issue I tried to file a ticket using the tool and I waited for a week after hearing nothing and tried again. At that point it told me the last message had not been sent and to try again which I did, and another week or maybe month went by before I tried again. Well I figured it was not going to send it so I went to the web and contacted someone. They looked and said that everything was fine and nothing could be done to speed things up. But nothing was done to correct anything!! No fix to the issue of contact. Well fine I went on my way, but it was still crawling so I contacted again and someone did something because it went sailing along for a couple of weeks till it again died in the water. I again contacted the web interface and was told that all is normal it was just over 200 GB so it would be slow now. GREAT!! Do you know how long it will take to backup a 1TB disk at 2 GB a WEEK? I did get a response from Maxwell however and I was very please that he at least explained the details of your policy to make things slow. Mind you I at one time had this all backed up, but now I am only about 490 GB backed up. Please remember that number of 490 GB for a minute. Also remember that I only use my system about 2-3 hours max a day the rest of the time 24×7 it is on and I have an excellent cable connection with very good bandwidth.

3. Lost data – So now it is the end of September and it has been many months since this all started. I went on vacation with that 490 GB of data safely tucked away on your servers, and low and behold when I came back from vacation I had a whopping 170 GB of files. I did nothing to the system since I was not here, but where did they go? Following up on the ticket once again I asked where my files went? They told me to send the log files so I tried the tool and told them I did not think it would work. It did not after I tried 2-3 time to send them that way. I contacted them again to say I was not able to send them that way and if they would tell me where they were I would just attach them to an email and send so they sent me instructions on how to do that. After a couple of tries I finally got them sent but heard nothing for several days. So I again sent a message to ask if they had received them and had a chance to examine them to answer my questions. The response I received today was unbelievable!! Nothing is wrong!! Everything is fine!! And did not address a single issue.

So as you can see no one has addressed my questions much for more than to say, all is well and things are just slow. Can you answer my questions?
Where are my files? Will it always be this slow? If so then I surely will need to find another backup service since it will be impossible for you to keep up. My biggest question though is, how do you expect customers to react to customer service like this? I am at the end of my rope. I like your software, and system idea, but it needs to work!! And when it does not, then I need support and not just glossed over. I have sent several customers your way, but I am reluctant to send any more since I do not recommend poor products. That reflects badly not only on you guys, but ME in particular. Kim Komando swears by you guys, but I am sure thinking about taking my story to her too for her opinion. Can you tell I am pissed?

As I say, all I really want is to be helped. I hope that you will take this seriously and get me that help. Let me know what you need from me.

Thanks,
Ron

Hello Ron and thank you for your e-mail.

David Friend, our CEO, has asked me to assist you.

Thank you for your note and for explaining your situation. I see that your account is listed under xxxxx I will have one of our Senior Support technicians contact you to determine why the files are no longer in your backup.

Sincerely,
Rosanne

Carbonite Customer Support
http://www.carbonite.com

David,
I have been reluctant to contact you because I know you are a busy man and I wanted to try to get help thru your normal channels before escalating this to you. I have tried and tried now to get things resolved, but I have just been amazed that no one will seem to address these issues with me. I will give you the case number (############) so you can pull your tickets there to see the history, but then give you my questions so it may be more clear.

1. Slow backup – I have been a customer for nearly 2 years now and at one point I had all my files backed up. I then upgraded to a new 1TB disk and in the process of this upgrade Carbonite thought I had a new system or something and started ALL over again backing up my files. So I figured maybe I did something wrong and would just live with it as it was making good time backing up the files. But then it hit a wall and was only backing up 1-2gig a WEEK and that was unacceptable.

2. Can’t contact – So with the slow issue I tried to file a ticket using the tool and I waited for a week after hearing nothing and tried again. At that point it told me the last message had not been sent and to try again which I did, and another week or maybe month went by before I tried again. Well I figured it was not going to send it so I went to the web and contacted someone. They looked and said that everything was fine and nothing could be done to speed things up. But nothing was done to correct anything!! No fix to the issue of contact. Well fine I went on my way, but it was still crawling so I contacted again and someone did something because it went sailing along for a couple of weeks till it again died in the water. I again contacted the web interface and was told that all is normal it was just over 200gb so it would be slow now. GREAT!! Do you know how long it will take to backup a 1TB disk at 2gb a WEEK? I did get a response from Maxwell however and I was very please that he at least explained the details of your policy to make things slow. Mind you I at one time had this all backed up, but now I am only about 490gb backed up. Please remember that number of 490gb for a minute. Also remember that I only use my system about 2-3 hours max a day the the rest of the time 24×7 it is on and I have an excellent cable connection with very good bandwidth.

3. Lost data – So now it is the end of September and it has been many months since this all started. I went on vacation with that 490gb of data safely tucked away on your servers, and low and behold when I came back from vacation I had a whopping 170gb of files. I did nothing to the system since I was not here, but where did they go? Following up on the ticket once again I asked where my files went? They told me to send the log files so I tried the tool and told them I did not think it would work. It did not after I tried 2-3 time to send them that way. I contacted them again to say I was not able to send them that way and if they would tell me where they were I would just attach them to an email and send so they sent me instructions on how to do that. After a couple of tries I finally got them sent but heard nothing for several days. So I again sent a message to ask if they had received them and had a chance to examine them to answer my questions. The response I received today was unbelievable!! Nothing is wrong!! Everything is fine!! And did not address a single issue.

So as you can see no one has addressed my questions much for more than to say, all is well and things are just slow. Can you answer my questions?
Where are my files? Will it always be this slow? If so then I surely will need to find another backup service since It will be impossible for you to keep up. My biggest question though is, how do you expect customers to react to customer service like this? I am at the end of my rope. I like your software, and system idea, but it needs to work!! And when it does not, then I need support and not just glossed over. I have sent several customers your way, but I am reluctant to send any more since I do not recommend poor products. That reflects badly not only on you guys, but ME in particular. Kim Komando swears by you guys, but I am sure thinking about taking my story to her too for her opinion. Can you tell I am pissed?

As I say, all I really want is to be helped. I hope that you will take this seriously and get me that help. Let me know what you need from me.

Thanks,
Ron

Hello Ron and thank you for your e-mail.

David Friend, our CEO, has asked me to assist you.

Thank you for your note and for explaining your situation. I see that your account is listed under xxxxx I will have one of our Senior Support technicians contact you to determine why the files are no longer in your backup.

Sincerely,

Rosanne

Carbonite Customer Support

http://www.carbonite.com

Did Connected notify any of us about the problem?

Not me at least.

Did Connected post any warnings on their home page?

Not that I saw.

Did Connected know about it?

Definitely. When I called tech support, when I could not restore, yes. And they told me it was going to be weeks before they were going to have an SP3 version.

They did remain very good at sending me an email about charging my credit card monthly and pretending to back up my .pst file.

I put together an XP SP2 machine and recovered what I could and put that data with my in house backup and what was still on my mail server. Most of what I lost was very recently updated contact info and appointments and some sent mails.

After that, I decided I could never trust Connected.com again because they concealed their problem with SP3.

If they had announced the SP3 problem, I could created a new small .pst file and hung my main old .pst file under it and carried a couple USB thumb drives to back up the new small .pst alternately every 12 hours until Connected had a working SP3 version.

Was the roll out of SP3 a great surprise to Connected? Come on.

If there is anything an online backup service should be good at, it is incrementaly backing up rapidly changing files containing new appointments, new contact info, and new emails and attachments, especially travelling.

So I do not think Connected.com is a trustworthy solution either.

Of course…if someone wants to give me $50 mil, I’ll gladly build a very nice data center. Or two!

http://www.xzba...eseller_program

I was trusting carbonite to do my backups, but you can bet your bottom dollar I won’t trust them again.

1. Removable media
2. Online local backup to another drive or computer
3. Offsite storage

What you’re trying to mitigate is the potential that all of your data will disappear at any one time.
You’re trying to insure against the ultimate disaster – the loss of everything in your home or business. Can’t really do that if all your data is stored at a single site.

If you do all 3 religiously (or at least try), you stand a much better chance of getting off the matt when you or your biz gets clocked with a big knockout punch – a fire, a theft, vandalism or employee sabatoge. Leaving everything to one of these forms of backups just aint enuf.

We started GotData over a year ago. Its app can be installed on a single or hundreds of machines – you pay only for the amount you store.

Its app compresses and encrypts the data at the client side, pushes the package to the cloud and stores up to 28 versions of the file there.

For those of you that are paranoid, we simply say encrypt your data client side. Nobody except you can make heads or tails of the stored version then.

Some amazing features – it will only back up the delta (changed portion) of an already saved file. PST files from Outlook can be backed up on the fly and only the changes will get saved. You can get it to back up immediately AFTER the file is saved and finished with or have the app back up everything during the night (blocking out daytime hours). And for restoring its a snap. It WAS written with the original programmer’s mom in mind. If she can backup and restore a file using this app, then anyone can.

Not to mention you can send links to people to either view pictures OR download files. Sort of like a personal ftp server.

Really quite awesome.

http://www.gotdata.ca