This is just now being reported due to a recent encounter with the named companies, the original incident occurred back in November (11).
These companies work together, under different names, and offer different services, and take in data recovery jobs and then offer and often require use of their online backup remote services in order to obtain special pricing for the requested data recovery services.
We ourselves are a computer service center and outsource specific services when needed and in the case of working with this company we are referring to "Data Recovery".
Whenever we work with a 3rd party company, we make efforts to insure they are a reputable and reliable company to work with as it is our company and reputation that is going to be put on the line ultimately.
Although our customers are also made aware of the work being performed by a 3rd party company, we are still responsible.
We spoke with the company and confirmed their method of operation, expected time lines, and after several discussions and verifications of processes, we proceeded with using their company to perform data recovery services for our client.
Being in the Technology Service industry, we are very specific with our vendors, 3rd party service providers and of course our customers as to the costs and expectations of any products or services we provide.
In this case there were 3 factors, the time & cost to analyze and time & cost to perform the actual data recovery.
We advised in this case the customer required a quick turn around and was not able to pay the additional costs of an expedited repair. The representative we worked with stated the standard turn around times, for a standard repair, however he advised us if we were able to take the Hard Drive (HD) in to the facility the analysis portion would be done within 1-2 days and depending on the problem with the HD the recovery could be performed within 7-10 days.
They state the standard of 2-3 weeks so that if there is an overflow of work, or the complexity for the recovery being performed on the HDs during the period requires additional time.
This was completely reasonable, and we understand the purpose of making such statements, however he did specify there was sufficient capacity at the location we were to drop the HD off at and there would be no issue in meeting the customer's needs.
With this understood, we proceeded to drop of the HD and then maintain communications with their company through the entire process.
There were immediate problems as the HD was not able to evaluated for nearly a week, (not including weekends or holidays). As each day passed after the first 3-5 working days we were given useless status reports and updates and regardless of who we contacted no one could provide a real status or estimate of what was going to be accomplished by any day or time.
We of course updated our customer as to the status of this and was kept up to date on all correspondence and information available whenever it was available.
We were eventually given the estimate of $1700 for recovery and we advised the customer of this estimate.
The customer was not able to afford the cost, and we contacted the company and stated this as the case and requested the HD be returned to us per their policy of "free estimates" and "no recovery, no charge", other than shipping.
It was at this time the company offered a reduced rate of recovery to $700 with the requirement of using their on-line backup service as a trial and it could be canceled at anytime.
We made this offer to the customer, they accepted only under the condition the recovery be performed within the necessary time line of less than 2 weeks.
In contacting datarecoverycorproation.com to inform them of the customer's request, they agreed and again stated their was sufficient capacity to have this accomplished.
Basically, they were not able to perform the recovery in the agreed to time, which took nearly a month to complete the recovery process, and during this process they advised us data was being recovered over the process of the recovery, and then ultimately stated "the majority of the data had been recovered, however in it's current state it is unusable".
It was at this time they stated the data could most likely be worked on by specialists located in a lab in Canada and they could most likely recover the data and make it available to our customer.
We again advised our customer, we also advised against proceeding due the experience we had thus far, and also stated we would not be able to recommend going forward based on our experience in the industry never hearing of such a condition and believe the likeliness of recovery to be very low.
This service was also at an additional cost.
As the customer had already invested a certain amount of time and money into this, the customer decided to proceed.
We were again advised of turn around time of a few days, and it required over a week to discover there was no data recovered previously, and they were not able to provide any recovered data.
During this process there was significant "turn over" where the first representative we were working with was "no longer with the company", and the next representative we worked with became involved accidentally as he was supposedly in another department, and when we started making complaint requests and requested a refund we accidentally came into contact with a supervisor who was never available when requested by title or name, it was only if we made a sales request from the main phone number we would be able to reach him.
He stated he understood the overall scenario and suggested he would do everything he could to help us with the costs of this recovery, which he ultimately did not, but he did send us a free external HD valued at $150.00 and he returned the HD we provided for recovery, largely dissembled.
As we are the Computer and Technology industry, we are aware and always state there is no guarantee when performing data recovery.
Our issue here is the company mislead us in negations with their representatives, and sent us paperwork which was not in line with their verbal statements, and after encountering their high employee turn over rate they must not be credible/reliable persons, and in the handling of this case they most likely did not actually perform or provide the services they were charging for and simply took advantage of our customer.
After this case ended as badly as it did, we were not prompt in canceling the remote backup service, which we were forced into using, and in contacting them recently and requesting some form of refund to our credit card for services they never provided as we never used the backup service, they stated they were unwilling and were not required to provide refunds.
It was at this time I realized we should have reported this company previously, and we did not due to our own situation and being "busy" and of course that is completely our fault, and I can not blame them or anyone else for that.
Not that I have been reminded of the ethics and morals of these companies, I am making this report so people can be aware of them as well.
Bottom line, be careful when working with these companies and be sure to have any negotiations made with them or any company provide documentation confirming those arrangements as you can not TRUST the people you are working with.
This report is for the following companies and websites:
DATA RECOVERY CORPORATION
www.datarecoverycorp.com
www.remotebackupcorp.com
DBI
D.B.investments, Inc
Although this is NOT a direct reflection of their affiliates, such as ourselves, any company which use their services, as a 3rd party company, such as ourselves would be subject to their ethics, morals, and more importantly business operations.
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