Carbonite Back-Up Service Destroys a Life

So a couple of weeks ago I got a fatal virus. I couldn't tell you what date that was, because along with everything else covering the last 10 to 15 years of my life, the online backup storage "service", Carbonite, lost my personal journal that went back to 2003. Apparently, I was much smarter back in 2002 and earlier - I put the entries on my computer at the time, but then printed the pages out and put them in a binder. This was my reward for trying to save a tree.

How did I get this virus? I was doing something on my Dell Computer somewhere on the Internet when suddenly a McAfee window opened. The only problem with that was: I wasn't using McAfee. Well, I was and I wasn't. My online service provider, Comcast, offered a free version of McAfee to its customers, so (in my mind), it seemed semi-logical that there might have been a thin veneer of McAfee running somewhere behind my ISP. But I hadn't signed up for it. Of course that hadn't stopped McAfee from popping up every five minutes screeching "SIGN UP NOW!" The annoying pop-up box didn't give you the option of telling them to bug off. You had a choice of "signing up now", or signing up later". I didn't want to "sign up now" or "sign up later". I wanted them to go away and leave me alone. So I clicked the "X" at the top right corner of the pop-up box, to close it. Wrong move.

SYMANTIC JUMPS IN. The screen went black and my service disconnected. I thought "Uh-oh." The computer cycled back on, so I thought the service I was using, Symantic (Norton), had caught whatever this was. They hadn't. Not really sure what I was paying them for, because they sure let this virus right in the front door, sat it down and served it tea and cookies. On - off. On - off. On - off. I shut the thing down, tried re-booting. No good. I tried the option of re-booting as of the last known effective start-up. No good. I now needed a tech to look at it.

Luckily (so I thought), I had a service agreement with Staples, where I'd bought the Dell computer. I trudged it in.

STAPLES JUMPS IN. Apparently, the Staples service agreement doesn't cover viruses. It only kicks in if a wrecking ball swings through your home and damages the computer’s components. No wonder Staples had enough money to buy whatever billion dollar corporation they recently bought - they hard-sell service agreements to clueless customers knowing that wrecking balls rarely swing through people's houses and destroy their computer's components. While they get viruses all the time. I now had to PAY for tech service. Despite STAPLES’ promises of prompt service when they sold me this agreement, they now tell me that they couldn’t even look at my system until five days later because their tech guy (tech GUY?) was apparently so overburdened with crashed computers he couldn’t get to it. I’d had the computer for about 3 months, by the way.

I told Staples to try to save the data if they could. However, I added, I had an online backup service, so if they were unable to save the data, it might not be a total loss. At that moment I thought the worst that could happen would be I'd lose that day's work. Little did I know …

HEWLETT-PACKARD REARS ITS UGLY HEAD

So here's the kicker: I had another computer, a Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario, purchased before the Dell, and sitting in a box on the floor. Why was the Compaq Presario sitting in a box on the floor?

The Compaq Presario had come with what is probably the all time worst operating system Bill Gates has ever concocted: Windows Vista. Gates had apparently decided to cram this new and horrible system down America's collective throats by installing it on EVERYTHING and never even giving you the choice of selecting XP if you wanted it. If you wanted XP (and within thirty seconds of installing Vista, most people do), you had to buy XP system separately and install it yourself. People who have just spent big bucks purchasing a computer usually don't want to re-mortgage their homes to buy XP, and unhappily go along with Vista. Wrong move.

THE DISASTER THAT IS MICROSOFT VISTA.

Unlike the XP hourglass, Vista’s symbol of inactivity, appropriately, is a blue wheel, spinning away morosely on your computer screen, looking like an automobile tire unable to extricate itself from an arctic snow bank. I can think of no symbol more ironically apt - unless they change it to a little animated construction guy in a hard hat detonating a load of dynamite and blowing up your system, your peace of mind and your sanity simultaneously. Also apt.

It occurred to neither Bill Gates or the Compaq people that people (a) might have moved past dial-up modems and onto cable service broadband, or (b) would prefer to set up their own Internet Explorer home pages.

No matter how much you try to change the settings to broadband, Vista simply overrides you and sets it right back to "dial-up". Eventually, after hours of working on this problem, you have no choice. First you have to fortify yourself with a stiff drink so powerful that makes you numb, and then you have to call either the Windows or Hewlett Packard "tech" people. You have to be completely and utterly numb before you do this, or you’ll have a stroke. Really. There is no other way you'll survive that experience, which is exactly what Bill Gates and Hewlett Packard want: if calling their "customer service" people is such an ordeal that it makes you physically ill, maybe you'll call somebody else, like the Geek Squad (now such a big business and so expensive it's laughable). So I pour a stiff drink and then a second one. Not quite numb enough; and pour a third. Now maybe I’m ready to call Hewlett Packard’s so-called “Customer Service”. WRONG MOVE.

FAR EASTERN CUSTOMER “SERVICE”:

Both Bill Gates AND Hewlett Packard had already decided that all of their Customer Service should be shipped off to the Phillipines (which was most likely the origin of the fatal virus in the first place and definitely the origin of billions of dollars lost to computer hacking and identity theft in the second) or to India, whose residents are mostly unintelligible.

Talking to far eastern Indians – if you can actually understand them – would be a memorable comedy routine if it weren’t so tragic. Apparently someone told them, “Americans are so racist they won’t listen if they think you’re a foreigner. Tell them you’re Fred Smith and they’re so stupid they’ll buy it.” So you get some completely unintelligible person in New Delhi saying, “Hello I’m Fred Smith”, or “I’m Mary Jones”. The lie is so pathetically blatant your first reaction is stunned silence. Being lied to so spectacularly right off the bat gives you some indication of how intelligent Bill Gates and Hewlett Packard people think you are.

I’ve been so disgusted by this obvious ploy that in past episodes, I’ve repeated their names back at them throughout the conversation, heavy on the sarcasm. “Why yes, MARY SMITH. I’m sure you can help me, MARY SMITH. Are you named after your grandmother, MARY SMITH? What a charming American name. You must be very proud of it.” Meanwhile, “MARY” is spouting off nonsense in an Indian accent so thick I doubt she’d even be understood in her native country.

“MARY SMITH” (or maybe it was “BILL JONES”, I can’t remember), after wasting two hours of my time I’ll never get back and accomplishing nothing beyond giving me a migraine, now decide the Compaq CPU needs to be returned to Hewlett Packard, because it’s obviously broken. Or missing some key component. “Mary” or “Fred” now shuttle me off to another New Delhi resident, “PETER JOHNSON”, who hates women. The minute he hears my voice he develops a sneer and a condescension that is absolutely mind-boggling. I know that just getting back to Customer Service through their nightmarish automated voice system is going to require another two hours of my time, so I’m stuck with “PETER JOHNSON”, who is one of the nastiest human beings I’ve ever encountered. His job is to arrange for me to return the CPU to Hewlett Packard. He does this by interrupting me repeatedly, snapping, “I can’t understand you!” (yeah? Try learning English) and sighing heavily over and over again. I know that demanding the name of his Supervisor will only get me disconnected, so apparently Hewlett Packard reduces their customer service costs by making absolutely certain you’ll never – EVER – call back.

Have you ever wondered about that line of crap all of the corporations hand you: “This call may be monitored or recorded for Quality Assurance purposes”? No, really. Show of hands: how many of you have received a telephone call from someone in Quality Assurance of (name that corporation) who says, regretfully, “I was listening to the recording of your recent telephone call with Customer Service, and want to apologize to you personally for having saddled you with an obvious moron who knew nothing about our product, was too lazy to give it any thought, and didn’t give a rat’s ass. By way of apology I’d like to send you a free airline ticket to the Bahamas where you can relax on a beach and recover from the stress our ignorant employee put you through”?

I thought not.

FED-EX AGAIN: Back to Hewlett Packard. Apparently, it has also never occurred to Hewlett Packard that their customers might actually be employed. Forget Bill Clinton. THIS is the real “vast right wing conspiracy”, because you’ll convince nobody that Bill Gates or the CEO of Hewlett Packard are Democrats. Nice try, but it won’t fly. This is the greed and capitalism at its worst, the province of demons like Carl Icahn, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter and Karl Rove, all of whom would disembowel your grandmother and serve up her entrails for dinner without blinking if they thought it would score them a few bucks. The point is: if you listen to the more rabid conservatives, they’re all convinced that everyone in America is unemployed and sucking the public teat anyway. Why else would Hewlett Packard set up return shipping exclusively with Fed Ex (no other choice), who doesn’t work on weekends? I now have a choice: carry the entire CPU with me on the commuter train to the office and have FedEx pick it up there (yeah, ok – THAT sounds like fun. Maybe I should make Ann Coulter carry it on her back like a pack mule), or wait until I can take a day off of work to stay home and hope FedEx bothers to show up. (See “Fun with Fed Ex”). FedEx, of course, has also shipped their customer service out to people who don’t speak intelligible English. But that’s another story.

The bottom line is: I now have a useless Hewlett Packard computer, and no hope of seeing it in working order again any time soon, sitting in a box on the floor. Because I needed a computer, I went and purchased the Dell from Staples. Because Staples sells nothing with XP, I’m back with Vista. I power it up …

… and have the exact same problem with Internet Explorer frantically trying to access a dial-up modem.

PASSING THE BUCK

I know I can’t handle Microsoft’s so-called “Customer Service” funhouse again without screaming. That comes as no surprise to Billy Gates, who planned it that way. Since everyone I’ve talked to has pointed their fingers at everyone else (Microsoft blamed Hewlett Packard, Hewlett Packard blamed Comcast and Comcast blamed Microsoft) – I try Comcast one more time. One reason: generally, they speak English.

COMCAST JUMPS IN - AGAIN

Earlier in this Compaq Disaster I unfortunately lost out in the Customer Service lottery and got “Moesha, Moesha, Moesha” (or whatever her name was) who, true, could speak a barely passable form of slurred English, but raised laziness to new heights with HER heavy sighs and bored grunts in response to everything I said. She’s the one who blamed Microsoft and disconnected the call. (And yet I never heard from the Comcast Quality Assurance people, either, after that call. How strange.)

I try again. I get a guy who actually knows his business. He performs one “ping” on the Comcast cable box and Internet Explorer appears on the screen like solstice sunlight blazing through the rocks at Stonehenge.

CARBONITE’s ONLY SUCCESS

Before buying the Compaq, I had signed up for an online backup service: CARBONITE. I did have an external storage drive, but had recently moved and the cord that powered it had gone missing. Heaven forbid external hard drives should operate with easily replaceable power cords. No, this bunch of yahoos had chosen a power cord that could only be replaced by contacting the company and buying a new “specially designed” one. I hadn’t gotten around to that yet, and decided to go the online route, just to be safe. Seemed easy enough. My thinking was, when I buy the power cord and get the external hard drive working again, I’ll have a redundant back-up system. You tell Carbonite which files you want to back-up by right clicking on it, and afterward, the file is then marked with a little green light that tells you, “We backed this file up”. A yellow light icon tells you the file hasn’t been backed up yet. When I bought the Dell, I restored all of my files from CARBONITE without any problem. Read that last sentence again. They restored all of my files without any problem. So at least on the day I did this first restore, they had all my files.

Summary: I now have one working system (Dell) and one non-working system (Compaq) sitting on the floor waiting for me to take a day off of work and hope FedEx shows up as promised.

Three to four months later (i.e., a few weeks ago) the Dell gets the fatal virus from the McAfee pop-up window.

BACK TO THE PRESENT

My biggest mistake was telling STAPLES not to worry about wiping the Dell clean because I had an online backup service. True, at the time, I had no way of going online and making SURE they had all my files, but why would I? They’d already done a full restore into the Dell a few months earlier. Nothing had given me any indication that the files weren’t there. I’d switched back to back-up mode (if you don’t, Carbonite throws up a warning window at you every time you power up). The same green lights were on the same files. There were a few yellow lights on files I’d worked on the day of the virus infection, and the most I thought I’d lose was that day’s work. Somewhat annoying, but I could live with it.

THE WASTED DAY

When I got home from Staples and looked at the boxed up COMPAQ Presario sitting on the floor, it occurred to me that maybe the crackerjack HEWLETT PACKARD idiots had been wrong about that computer. COMCAST had fixed the Internet Explorer online issue in the Dell on the second try (once “Moesha” wasn’t doing the troubleshooting) – maybe they could get this one working as well. I figured it was worth a try and unpacked it. Set it back up. Called COMCAST. Got a third person this time who also knew her stuff and bypassed the Windows VISTA urge to reach for the nearest phone line and do a dial-up. Yay! The Compaq worked!

So, apparently I had killed nearly an entire day being driven to madness by the far eastern Hewlett Packard team of so-called “Customer Service” people and “PETER JOHNSON”, the misogynistic toad. Lovely. Now all I had to do was restore my files from Carbonite a second time.

CARBONITE DESTROYS A LIFE

Carbonite didn’t have them. After a day of “restoring”, all they had managed to restore were the paltry contents of a file called “Old System”, which were the remnants of the external hard drive (backed up in 2005, and before I lost the power cord to it) – and one photo that happened to be sitting on my desk top. It amounted to about 2-3% of the files I’d restored from them a few months earlier, and I had never gone into that “Old System” folder and marked it for back-up since the restore. Most of those files were merely earlier copies of files I wanted to review before deleting them. Everything else – 97-98% of my files – were missing. I called CARBONITE for help.

“PAY US TO TALK TO YOU”

Carbonite apparently has instituted a new policy since I signed up: the “Pay Us to Talk to You” plan. This involved putting you on hold for a ridiculously long period of time, while demanding that you sign up for their “Preferred Member” plan which – they said – would give you priority and preferential treatment and service by the senior members of the staff. They tell you this as you’re in panic mode late on a Friday, reading the notice that says they only work Mondays to Fridays, during regular business hours. Apparently they’re also part of the VRWC (“Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”) who’ve convinced themselves that everybody but them is on welfare and at home all day.

Stupidly, I fell for it. Fine. After they’d purred “Click 1 for Preferential Treatment”, I clicked 1. The phone was answered on the first ring. Credit card information was demanded. As anyone who works for a living will tell you, being a “senior member” of any staff doesn’t guarantee that you’re the smartest – and often means the exact opposite, and CARBONITE is no exception. The “Senior Staff Member” spent about 45 minutes poking lazily around in my backup, re-running restore updates and finding maybe one or two more useless files, before deciding that he needed to upgrade the problem to “Engineering”. Then he went home for the weekend, leaving me in shock.

Frantically I called STAPLES, who had told me they wouldn’t be working on my virus-shattered DELL computer until later that evening. I left a message for the overworked single tech “guy”: “DON’T WIPE THE DATA, CARBONITE LOST MY BACKUP!!” I still believed that CARBONITE still had my files somewhere – everybody did. The Staples people I talked to thought the same thing: “there’s no way they don’t have your files in their back-up files”, they reassured me. I believed them.

When I called STAPLES the next morning, I got the horrifying news – the message had not been relayed; the tech had wiped the DELL clean. They, at least, had the common courtesy to apologize for the screw-up. Still, they reassured me, “There’s no way CARBONITE has lost all of your files – they’ll find them.”

LOST YOUR LIFE? (*yawn*)

Now, it would seem to be that if CARBONITE had been made aware that they had lost 10-15 years worth of files … when being an online back-up service was their entire business … they’d get right on it – (unless they were losing SO many files that mine weren’t a priority). If they did “get right on it”, there was no indication of it. Especially, since I sent Mr. “Senior Staff Member” several e-mails with the names of critical files they needed to look for, and gave him both my work number and cell phone number. Monday rolled around. No calls of reassurance. No calls to let me know they were working on the problem. No responses to the e-mails. Nothing. Dead silence. Tuesday rolled around. No calls of reassurance. No calls to let me know they were working on the problem. No responses to the e-mails. Nothing. Dead silence.

On Wednesday, I got the following jaw dropping response:

Hello and thank you for contacting Carbonite's Priority Support Team.

I apologize that this has taken this long to get an answer for you. I have heard back from the engineering team and it appears that the files that you were looking for are not available for restore. What apparently happened was that after you restored the files they were not selected for backup again so therefore the new information that you had saved on that machine was not getting backed up by Carbonite. We apologize deeply about this matter, but this is the answer that we got back from our engineering team.

Thank you for using Carbonite!

WRONG ANSWER!

You recall Carbonite’s own system was to label files that had been backed up with green dots, and files not yet backed up with yellow dots? When I did my first restore, all of the files labeled with green dots (meaning: backed up) still had green dots. As far as I knew, Carbonite had restored copies of my backed-up files, just as I’d asked, and still had their own copy of the full back-up. Why would I select them for back-up again, if their own labeling system identified them as already “backed up”? Files that I worked on since the restore (not yet backed up) had yellow dots. I had switched the back-up system to “back-up” from “restore” – because if I hadn’t, a warning window would pop up every time I booted up. It was working, because yellow dots were switching to green dots, just as they had the last time. (And none of those were among the files they actually restored). And where in that system is the indication that after a restore Carbonite no longer had your files?

Answer: there isn’t. Beyond the obvious problem that they’d failed to save files I’d worked on since the first restore, you’re telling me that CARBONITE, who specializes in back-ups, hadn’t even backed up their OWN files? And couldn’t even access a system back-up 3-4 months old and locate the full contents of the first restore? And since they were basically saying that they didn't have any of the already restored files, what were THESE Files? Files they'd failed to restore the first time? Lovely. They're basically saying they'd failed to restore 2-3% of my files during the first restore. Not really reassuring, was it?

I basically told them that:

Both you and your engineering team are mistaken.

The files which ended up being restored were NEVER selected for back-up. That doesn't even make logical sense; why would I back up things I didn't need a back-up for and never accessed??? I knew to switch the mode from restore to back-up mode again, and every single file I mentioned (and which was marked to be backed up every time it changed) would change from a yellow light to a green light within a 12 hour period, so your own program gave me every indication that they were backing up, as I PAID YOU TO DO.

You MUST have my full back-up in one of your back-ups. You cannot tell me that you have managed to lose 10-15 years of work without even blinking an eye. This was not MY error, this was yours, and I expect you to rectify the situation. You WILL find my FULL back-up somewhere in your system. I know you have it, since I've already restored it once before. The same files still appeared in my back-up log, even after the last restoration, so obviously, you still had them.

This time I cc’ed their vice president of Customer Care & Operations. So apparently, my paying them for access to the “senior staff” had actually meant, “the senior staff of low-level non-responsive and non-caring peons”, since I certainly don’t recall talking to a vice president of anything after paying them for access to the senior staff providing “priority support”.

This guy responded the same day.

Thanks for reaching out. I am very sorry for the frustration. I will have a Senior Support Engineer take another look at your issue and determine if we can in fact retrieve the files. We will escalate this back to our engineering team. Regards,

Ah, so we’re back to the same engineering guys who blew me off the last time and tried to blame me for the disaster. Lovely. I have one last option now – the e-mail address of their CEO. And unless he does something … CARBONITE has basically lost 10-15 years worth of files.

The response from the vice president was on the 17th of June. I haven’t heard from them since then. How long does it take to find a system back-up? Six days of stony dead silence.

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE LOSS

… is still staggering: all of my financial records, carefully brought forward through multiple systems and software programs since 1997. All of my undergraduate term papers and research files which were forming the basis of a graduate thesis. The drafts of my graduate thesis. Genealogical records that had been researched and made into a website – dating back to 2001. All of my photos – some of which were irreplaceable and only in digital format. A huge computer address and contact book. E-books. My family’s recipes, given to me by my mother who has since had a heart attack and regressed to the age of 5. The contents of a report on the verge of being sent to the District Attorney’s office with proof of Grand Larceny committed against my elderly parents that had required over a year to pull together and compose. Tax files. Correspondence files. A personal daily diary/journal dating back to 2003. Lists of personal belongings saved in storage. My portfolio. My resumes. My work history. Work related files. The list is endless, and every few minutes I’ll think of something else, and go into shock again.

Frustration? They think I'm merely frustrated? "Frustrated" is realizing they're not going to answer their own telephones without a hefty bribe. Devastated comes closer, but even then doesn't quite cover it. People who've watched everything they own go up in an inferno after paying the contractor to install a fool-proof fire suppression system would probably not summarize the unnecessary loss of their lives' work by saying, "Gee, I feel really frustrated right now".

And still … dead silence from Carbonite. Who apparently have no conscience, no ethics, no hearts, no compassion … no redundant systems or back-up files of their own – just a hand out, demanding money before they’ll even talk to you.

BILL GATES’ VISTA TOPS IT ALL OFF

Shortly after this disaster, while I was still in numb, hyperventilating shock, Internet Explorer shorted out again. Changing the default IE Home Page from AOL/Compaq to Comcast (or any other default home page) is apparently a critical error in the VISTA system.

I go to the Windows Home Page and try to reinstall it.

“We don’t provide Internet Explorer downloads for Vista because it’s already installed!” they announce. Never once occurred to them that their own system might blow IE out of the water, requiring a re-installation. Nope. Not Billy boy and friends. I now have no direct browser or Internet Access because they won’t allow VISTA users to reinstall IE into a Vista System.

Originally published:  Jun. 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 AM