After receiving repeated messages from Carbonite support that a refund was not possible I took my case to the BBB to file a formal complaint. (note to self, be cautious in the future of companies that don’t offer 100% customer satisfaction guarantee)
With the last few e-mails from Carbonite support being totaly unreadable I just had enough. Thanks to the power of the BBB In less than 24 hours I had my refund and I can now close the door on them for good.
So as a suggestion to all upset Carbonite customers out there, give their support a try first, it’s only fair to let them try and resolve the issue, but if you find yourself in my situation just take it up with the BBB. (this link will make it easy, it’s already linked to the Carbonite BBB record)
As a side note, it’s beyond me why they never tried to troubleshoot the e-mail issue – which is so ridiculous it pains me. It’s obvious the messages are HTML formatted messages that came from MS Word or an older version of Outlook (which produces hideous non-standard HTML) and that the formatting is getting mangled somehow when sending to Gmail. It wasn’t until they started pasting in content from some KB into their e-mails to me that the problem started to happen. (and yes, I did once take the time to strip out the actual message from the garbage pile of MS Office HTML tags and it was a KB article on how to disable windows Defender, Carbonite, guys, my service was working great a month ago with Defender installed why would it suddenly cause a problem now? The upload speeds were slow on my Mac too and Defender sure as hell isn’t installed there. Either way I followed the instructions, just so I could say this: I told you that wasn’t the problem)
I don’t know for certain but I suspect that Carbonite has almost 100% outsourced customer support, heck it’s not even known where your data is going when you use their service, does it even stay in the United States? When I would send messages to Carbonite support on Friday, I would receive responses late Sunday that would match the start of a India/China work day.
When will companies realize that it always comes back to customer service? Great customer service creates customers for life. Great customer service would have likely made me OK with the slow upload speeds and great customer service would have certainly stopped me from blogging about this and ultimately getting my refund.
I know the Carbonite folks are reading this blog and guys, I hope your listening.
Copyright © 1994-2010 Silvexis LLC
Dear Erik,
Yes, I certainly do read the blogs. What people are saying about Carbonite is extremely important to me. And sometimes I learn that we didn’t treat a customer right, which appears to be the case with you. I’m sorry that had to resort to BBB — you could also have sent an email to me at david.friend@carbonite.com and I would have taken care of this, and I also would have been appreciative of knowing about the scrambled emails from customer support — I have not heard about this problem before, so I’ll definitely look into it. If you have an example, I’d appreciate your forwarding it to me. I’d also appreciate knowing what your problem was with Carbonite and why you were dissatisfied with it. I don’t know your email address so I can’t look up your records.
Dave Friend, CEO
Carbonite.com
David, again, thank you for your reply. I appreciate your response which is also why it pains me to ask this and I don’t say this to be rude or disrespectful but are you really reading my posts?
I ask this because I feel like everything you need to know about my experience with Carbonite is outlined in my blog posts. I described my experience with your support team and in there I mentioned that you were cc’d on several of my e-mails, I also cc’d your VP of support. Additionally I described my e-mail issues both in many messages to support and in my blog. When I asked for a refund from support I was told it was against Carbonite’s policy to give refunds. The BBB really was my last resort. I don’t submit complaints lightly to them and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been compelled in my life to turn to the BBB.
Here are two of the last ticket numbers (411135-1009945 and 986324-HL123) from my case, perhaps you will be able to look up the details of my experience and some good will come from this. Like I mentioned before I’ve worked for many software companies over the years, I’ve managed products, lead QA and Research teams and even lead support a long time ago so I know how it feels to be in the hot seat and I do want to help you guys improve.
Best Regards,
Erik
Erik,
I was googleing to see if anyone else had problems with Carbonite and I found your complaint. Here is my experience:
I was installing the new java update and they were plugging Carbonite, They made a pitch and it sounded good. $5 and unlimited backup. That is actually the best deal around for “unlimited”. So like a lamb to slaughter I gave it a try. Then as I was installing ans signing up, it offered an even better deal if i signed up for 3 years. Also sounded great so I said ok, Ignoring the fact that only companies that have serious customer service issues offer you ANOTHER cheaper deal if you lock in for multiple years, KNOWING I had not even tried the service yet. So for all those reading, DO NOT BUY until you TRY. That was my fault, but they played it to the fullest. They also made sure they HIGHLIGHTED their refund policy, which was another HINT that their product is often returned. But it was late at night and I was throwing caution to the wind and trusting.
It loaded fine and started backing-up and i noticed the interface to select folders to back up was not easily discernible. and it was hogging resources like it was poorly programmed, and my GMAIL was acting up. It kept “Loading…” and was unresponsive. Well this for me was a deal breaker as my gmail is very important to me. In the morning, like 5 hours later, it was still effecting my computer resources and gmail, even after I put it on low priority, So i uninstalled it and called their support. I was like 10th in line on their support billing line which made me feel there were many people calling in for refunds. While waiting I connected to their online chat support. I was 3rd in line their. The phone guy was in India, he told me so. I like Indians so we were cool but he tried to troubleshoot and help and i was like no, gimmie my money back. then he was like. We can’t do that sir, we don’t give back money, Do you want to transfer to another computer? I was like gimmie my money, he was like We wont do it. So i asked him to send me an email telling me that was his companies policy not to refund money even less than 24 hours after purchase and trying the product. Guess what, he sent me an email saying just that. He said I had a chance to try for free and they are keeping the money.
At that same time their chat support came on. i told him i wanted a refund as their product had many problems and I was not willing to waste any more time trying to get my system to work with it. He tried a little, but after i insisted he was like wait a minute…. He asked me to verify my identity and stuff and then he said he sent the matter to the refund department and they would send me an email soon. In a few minutes I received a notification email with a refund number and everything was credited to my credit card. End of story.
So people can get out of this what they want, but to me it seems like carbonite is:
1. java based programming that has compatibility problems with vista and gmail and other java programs.
2. Poor developed program leaves them in their minds with no excuse but to play hard ball with customers asking for their money back.
3. carbonite will learn the hard way that this is a day and age where you HAVE to be cool with customers, and it starts with a cool product. Your product has problems, that is why you offer such a great deal. If I offered people $5 to back up all their stuff and when they signed up I made their live miserable and unmanageably and refused to give them their money because they trusted me and signed up, I would consider myself a bad person.
4. Hopefully carbonite shapes up before the CEO is hearing about this on CNN,ABC,NBC,FOX or CBS. In the age of Aquarius it’s not buyers beware, it sellers beware.
My computer has been acting up for a while now and it after looking at the CPU it is Carbonite sucking my resources in half. Even while typing this it takes my laptop a while to catch up to my slow typing skills. I have become disheartened with what I had thought to be an excellent program but as usual in this day and age it seems the development of this software has taken a back seat to profit. I will not renew at this point and may have to uninstall soon before renewal is up. I guess it is back to backing up my data on an external HD here at home. Sorry Carbonite, I am a big time Rush Limbaugh listener and bought into your marketing. Never again unless this issue is fixed asap.
Thanks for sharing your experience BSmith. You might be interested to know I've just started testing CrashPlan Central and will have a review up in a week or so. I'm backing up about 140 GB of data and I'm documenting my experience using the service every day for my review as well as my interactions with their support team. Some might know that I've been a CrashPlan+ user for years but never used their CrashPlan Central online backup service because it was too expensive. That all changed a few months ago when they dropped their price to less than Carbonite's lowest price. Stay tuned for my update I promise my review is going to be through as always.
Erik, thank your lucky stars that you've been dealing with Carbonite and that David Friend at least checks blogs such as yours. I'm having the same experience with Mozy yet I have no idea how to find out who is on the Mozy executive team as I really need to send them a letter. Mozy is doubly as bad as Carbonite and they state that they will refund unused months on yearly subscriptions. Trouble is, I asked for a refund on September 5 and here it is two weeks later and I've gotten no response.
I'm sick of Carbonite throttling upload speeds. This is ridiculous.
Erik – I had similar problems w/ SugarSync. First, unable to find previous version of file. Contacted tech support – no reply; contacted again; 5 days later – "we're looking into it;" 5 weeks later, still unresolved. Last straw – now my account is showing "disabled." Extremely frustrating w/ extremely poor response from Tech Support.
I'm requesting a refund from SugarSynch and will follow your advice re: contacting BBB if necessary.
Phil H.
Just filed my compliant with the BBB, these clowns need to have the smack put down on them and their shady practices. They refused me a refund after 2 hours of trying their terrible service. I sent an email, was given the 'we keep your moey and you're SOL' email reply so I just went straight to BBB.