Called and got a case number via the local number in San Diego. They offered to have someone pick up the drive which seemed very nice as the company's address was only a few miles away. I declined and said I'd drop off the drives instead. I arrived at the address only to find that it was a Regus office. I'd searched so that I specifically found a local recovery service center. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the drive would be picked up and taken to be serviced at one of the many clean rooms available here in San Diego. I later found out it was sent to Canada. I would not have dropped it off knowing that my sensitive business data was being sent out of the country. On the phone, it was explained that most services fall within the $350 range, but it has been as high as $1500 in some cases. All seemed reasonable.
I paid the initial fee for the express diagnostic. It was for 24 hour diagnostic. I dropped my drives off on a Thursday. There was some confusion about the drives and they sent me an email asking to clarify what drive was which. I did and waited another day. No answer. I emailed. No answer. I called the next day and finally got a hold of my "rep." Four business days later (6 calendar days) I receive an email asking for an additional payment and telling me that my drive needed to have the head stack replaced and the cost was going to be around $1800. Several hundred dollars more than the original estimate. Needing the data, I pay a down payment the same day. A week goes by and no update. I email and there's no update. Several more days go by and I call and email. I finally reach the rep and he says that there's no update. They've been working around the clock but there's no update yet. Several more days go by and then I get an email form letter stating that the drive was unrecoverable and asking what should be done with the drives. I ask for the return of them. They agree and I assume that I'll receive my drives the next day. No drives for several days. I call to find out where the drives are and the rep tells me they haven't been shipped yet. I get a FedEx tracking number the next day and learn that the drives have been shipped via ground from Ontario to San Diego. So much for valuing the customer's time. The package arrives 9 days later (a month after I dropped the drives off) and I learn that the package only has one drive. My other drive is still there. They didn't ship it. No explanation as to why. Just didn't. The say that they are shipping it now and I've asked for it to be overnighted. Bottom line, I'm out $500, no data recovered and I'm missing a good drive still. I had the original drive mirrored, but in a round of exceptionally bad luck, the original and the mirror both died at the same time, despite one being an external drive on USB and the other being an internal eSata drive...
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