Comments on: Carbonite Online Backup

By: Kenneth Eveler

Kenneth Eveler — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:06:31 +0000

hello, thank for this latest information. Therefore, I would like to ask for your allowance to add some of this information in my blog. Of course, I will provide a link to your website, as a source of my mentioned information.

By: Larry Beavers

Larry Beavers — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:49:19 +0000

CORRECTIONS. I am now in running battle with Carbonite. No fewer than 23 emails and no closer to even being able to ASK my questions. Thus far, I have received the sugary replies and PROMISES to contact me.
NEW _ THEY DID TRY TO CALL ONE TIME – I RETURNED THE CAL WHICH BECAME ANOTHER NIGHTMARE _ STILL NOTHING!
WELL, 4 WEEKS later and I know the David.friend@Carbonite.com address well and 6 others.
It has cost Carbonite probably 30 times as much money to HASSLE me per their “PAUL”, etc.,
than if they had just let me ask my questions.
I am a HUGE Admirer of GoDaddy.com (no business affiliation except I am a customer) and the President Bob Parsons has built a huge business and has done so by ALWAYS having Customer Service EASILY there BY PHONE when you need it. Mr. Parsons demands 100% service to his customers and it has paid off nicely. GoDaddy ads on the SuperBowl cost millions!
Sadly, CARBONITE and David Friend (if he exists) cannot hold a candle to such service.
I will try to get my questions answered for one more week then I will go the route of the folks that discovered CARBONITE employees were writing phony “references and feedbacks” on Amazon, etc. CARBONITE is slowly hurting itself and their success is a two-edged sword.
Within 18 months watch their competition grow in proportion to CARBONITE shooting itself in the foot.
Sorry about the typos but I am well past 65.
I am quite heavy in the media field …. stand by

By: Larry Beavers

Larry Beavers — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:42:26 +0000

I am now in running battle with Carbonite. No fewer than 23 emails and no closer to even being able to ASK my questions. Thus far, I have received the sugary replies and PROMISES to contact me.
WELL, 4 WEEKS later and I know the David.friend@Carbonite.com address well and 6 others.
It has cost Carbonite probably 30 times as much money to HASSLE me per their “PAUL”, etc.,
than if they had just let me ask my questions.
I am a HUGE Admirer of GoDaddy.com (no business affiliation except I am a customer) and the President Bob Parsons has built a huge business and has done so by ALWAYS having Customer Service EASILY there BY PHOE when you need. Mr. Parsons demands 100% service to his customers and it has paid off nicely. The ads on the SuperBowl cost millions!
Sadly, CARBONITE and David Friend (if he exists) canot hold a candle to such service.
I will try to get my questions answered for one more week then I will go the route of the folks that discovered CARBONITE employees were writing phony “references and feedbacks” on Amazon, etc.
I am quite haevy in the media field …. stand by

By: david miron

david miron — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:08:38 +0000

If you are considering Carbonite please take note that they have just been caught reviewing their own products on Amazon. What’s worse is they’ve known ths was going on for months and have not bothered to do anything about it. Only now after the New York Times exposed them did they remove the fraudulent reviews but all hell is breaking loose around them. Get a better picture and a nice cartoon here:
http://www.pcdisorder.com/2009/01/carbonite-belkin-pc-frustrations.html

By: Handy Backup?

Handy Backup? — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:43:59 +0000

I'm currently using Handy Backup (the one downloaded at .net, not a .com program) and their online backup service. Works with WHS fine.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:49:05 +0000

Yes that could very well be the case. It is worrying that companies do not appear to planning ahead sufficiently. If a company does not even have plans in place to cope if they are successful how we, the consumer, can be expected to have confidence that they can deal with a disaster. During my trawl for information it was clear that Carbonite had actually lost some or their customer’s data, when you are selling a backup service then losing data is simply inexcusable.

However, I think we as the consumer have to take a small proportion of the blame for;

a) Not asking the right questions in the first place, and
b) Not actually reading the information the companies do make available to us, I for instance, just paid my money and did not bother to check that the service would work on a Windows Home Server setup. That’s my bad, and now I have either wasted $50 or a day of my weekend re-organising how my data is stored.

It’s my opinion (formed right this minute!) that companies selling Cloud Services should start making available their Disaster Recovery Plans, that way I could make an informed decision on whether that company would take sufficient care of my data.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:38:49 +0000

I suspect that the Carbonite’s success in adding new customers has impacted its ability to provide the same level of customer support and technical success as it did previously. This is a classic problem that many firms deal with — at one scale, a modest support team can handle all request and a basic technology infrastructure can manage the load. At larger scale, these things start to break down unless they are managed and designed very well respectively. I can’t say for certain, but Carbonite’s marketing success may be the main driver of its current problems.

With regard to your current issue, depending on the amount of data you are trying to store, you may want to check out ElephantDrive (see my disclaimer, below). The Home Plus and Pro plans will accommodate external drives (as additional devices, per the plans).

Disclaimer: I may be biased in both my observations of Carbonite and my recommendation of ElephantDrive, as I am part of the team at ElephantDrive.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:31:42 +0000

That’s an interesting read However I’ll stand by my original statement that the service I received during the first 12 month was fine. I backed up without incident and I had need to recover some files which ran smoothly (although, to qualify, it was only a small percentage of my total backup).
With regard to both Belkin and Carbonite – I really surprised it took so long for companies to start doing this sort of thing.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:10:25 +0000

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/carbonite-stacks-the-deck-on-amazon/?scp=2&sq=pogue&st=Search

while i understand your specific issues with carbonite, there are other, more systemic reasons to be hesitant to use this company for your backup. check out the link to the ny times above and you’ll see what i’m saying