Top 25 for December 2008

One Response

1. Roaming

   December 30th, 2008 at 8:15 am

   1

   I would not recommend Carbonite, not just because of bugs and lack of features but weak docs lousy and slow support.

   Here’s a recent email to Carbonite after encountered a serious defect that, had I not caught it, would have corrupted my backup:

   My email to Carbonite::
   ”
   I followed your moronic uninstall/reinstall procedure for restoring files from another computer’s backup so the backup Carbonite on my current PC is pointing to is from another PC.

   So of course the last thing I want to do is to back up any files from my current PC to my other PC’s “golden” backup since I’d end up with a real mess.

   So what does your software do? The recovery engine crashes (”sorry”), and then Carbonite goes into backup mode! … In the middle of a treacherous restore recovery operation, your software wants to start backing files up to an unrelated backup catalog.

   Are you going to address this problem?

   Your restore-to-another computer seems to be one big clouge that has traps all over.
   ”

   Carbonite’s reply 3 days later:
   ”
   We have reviewed your account … and our records shows that you had transferred your subscription…. After restoring your data, you reinstalled Carbonite on … and your back is progressing fine on this computer now.

   Please let us know If we may be of further assitance.
   ”

   Note (despite the grammatical and spelling errors) that they did not at all address my concerns or the defect in their product.

   So now another email that I guess I’ll need to wait 3 days for a reply (their support form says it’s taking them 72 hours to respond to inquiries rather than their normal 24 hours):
   ”
   I have pointed out to you a specific defect in your product: if the recovery engine crashes, Carbonite automatically goes into backup mode and starts performing a backup. You did not address this defect in your response. Please let me know if you will be fixing this defect.
   “