After a month of back and forth, the computer store that lost my co-worker's old hard drive instead of transferring its irreplaceable contents to his newly purchased, $1,000 PC has agreed to cough up $500 worth of compensation.
Seems fair to me, despite the fact the customer was a bad boy about backup.
The fellow's wife, however, still believes that the store got off easy.
And many of you who commented on the first installment of this tale - those who placed responsibility for this mess exclusively on the shoulder's of my colleague - will find the store's settlement unnecessarily generous, if not obscenely so.
I've decided to omit the names of the customer and the store because my workplace relationship with the former might make my commentary about the latter seem unfair (and we're talking about a Mom and Pop place, not Circuit City).
From the original post:
Gone for good is seven years worth of correspondence between three generations of the buyer's family, as well as 2,000 e-mail addresses and all the administrative files for a fledgling news site. The stuff was on a drive that the store - not one of the big chains - tossed out instead of copying over to a new PC it sold a colleague of mine. (Yes, we beat him mercilessly for not backing it up.)
Your assignment here is to help determine proper compensation for this loss.
Dozens of you took to the assignment with great relish and the range of opinions on the matter could not have been wider.
Many displayed limited or no sympathy for my co-worker's plight:
"I can't get past the lack of a backup. If he had done one before having them do the transfer, how much would they owe him? It's kind of like film developers (remember film?) being responsible for damaged film but not lost pictures."
"I'm sorry, the store owes them nothing. I really do feel for this customer, but anyone leaving off a system with any vendor, without fully backing it up first, is their own worst enemy."
"Your friend needs to realize one little detail: It's HIS data and therefore his responsibility. This type of situation is one of the exact reasons why a person should backup, ideally keeping multiple copies on multiple media."
"There is no fair reason he should expect this computer store to reimburse him for data he was responsible for. Pure and simple."
As is so often the case in these kinds of disagreements, calling something pure and simple doesn't make it pure and simple. Not everyone was willing to absolve the store of responsibility or financial liability.
"Picture taking some very important documents to FedEx to have a copy made - and they shred them instead. Was it your fault you didn't make a copy before you went to make a copy? No. It's their fault for messing up data they explicitly took responsibility for by agreeing to copy it."
"Even if the owner had backups, throwing away a disk drive with personal information on it is irresponsible. I would ask for the cost of the computer and software and tell the store that they are not off the hook if my identity is stolen from their carelessness!"
The hard-core among the store apologists truly puzzle me. I mean not only are they hellbent on seeing the victim punished for his failure to back up his data, they apparently think so little of our rights as consumers as to give a grievously careless merchant a free pass.
Something tells me a tune or two may have changed had it been their ox being discarded like some old hard drive.
The good news here is that it seems both my co-worker and the computer store have learned from the episode.
"I note that because of my experience the store now returns an old hard drive to the customer," says my colleague. "I now take much more seriously than ever the necessity to back up our precious family files, thousands of which were lost."
The store will likely be more careful, meaning it will provide better service and presumably attract more business.
My colleague and his wife got a half-price PC in exchange for their loss.
The only ones feeling truly ripped off here? That would be The Backup Police, who didn't get their pound of flesh.
When not blogging, I am a Network World news editor and write the 'Net Buzz column.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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Criminal neglect
I didn't weigh in on the original, but I agree with someone who drew an analogy to bringing in a document to be copied. When you bring a document to a copy center, do you make a copy first? Can you imagine them saying 'well, we didn't make your copy(ies), but we did shred your original for you?
If his hard drive had failed and he had no backup - his fault. If he was bringing in a failed hard drive for data recovery, they are obligated to no more than a 'best faith' effort.
But he brought in a working hard drive, simply asking for data to be transfered, and they not only failed to do so, they destroyed /disposed of the original, which as was also pointed out, was STILL HIS.
Unless something is unclear or misrepresented here, they should not only have civil liability, they should be subject to criminal charges for willful destruction of private property.
Tossed or lost?
My original hard-core response would probably have been softened, but not necessarily changed, by the new wording. It sounded as though tossing was expected, perhaps part of a trade-in deal. When I trade in a car, I get everything out I want to keep before I take it in.
Today, though, the word is "lost", certainly not something expected.
All the descriptions of the event leave one question unanswered: was there an express agreement to transfer the data?
If yes, the store owes bigtime. Otherwise, my original response stands.
Why would he bring in his
Why would he bring in his old hard drive into the store if not to have it copied onto the new computer. He obviously didn't bring in for them to throw it away. He could have done that himself. Some people do not have the tech skills to back up there hard drive, yes, it is hard to understand that myself, but never the less true. So I can understand why he didnt' back it up. He would have had a backup if they had just copied it to the new hard drive as requested. They got off scott free in my oppinion. If he had taken them to court he could have sued for a hole bunch more I think. It is kind of nice to see that he didn't. If he is happy with the settlement then that is all that matters.
Computer Store is more at fault
Computer Store is more at fault. I am a Computer Store owner and have customer data to deal with everyday. The reason I say the store is more at fault as there should have been several safe guards in place to have avoided what happened. In our operation we have the following safe guards in place.
1. Customer signs agreement as to what may or may not be backed up and moved from one hard drive to another.
2. Signed disposition as to what happens to the old hard drive regardless if it gets handed back to the customer, erased and reused from trade in etc.
3. Store sits on items left for disposal for 5 days after customer picks up other system to insure nothing is forgotten or missed by store tech's or by customer forgetting certains items of info etc.
4. Most hard drive data transfers are done in our operation via a complete backup of the cusomer's hard drive from old PC and then transfered to new PC. We maintain the data for 30 days and then remove thus giving customer's plenty of time to insure they have what they needed or wanted.
5. When customers pickup theier PC's our tech's will run through what they are getting and show where data has been restored etc. before the customer leaves our store.
Having safe gurads and guidelines for employee's to follow would have prevented this from happening.
We also point out to all of our customer's the importance of backing up and the high cost to retreive data if a drive completely fails. The customer by his own fault in this case did not back anything up and should shoulder some of the burden, even though better practices by the Computer Store could have prevented the loss in this case.
You are not a computer store owner
If you were a computer store owner, you would have to charge a fortune to do any of that kind of work for your customers because the safeguards you mentioned cost lots of money and time. You can't afford to pay any techs enough to maintain those kinds of policies and still make money and be competitive. Nice try, but I'm not buying it. Also, when you refer to your customers in the plural, there is no apostrophe. The apostrophe implies ownership and your improper use of it makes you appear uneducated on top of not being a computer store owner.
If I take a photo to a copy shop, I have one photo that I am entrusting them not to destroy. If I take a hard drive full of years of priceless data to a mom and pop computer shop for transfer to a new drive, that's a completely different situation. People are more likely to sue the computer shop than the copy shop because the items we're handing over to them represent far higher values. The two situations are apples and oranges. There is no comparison. If you have a photo of the same value as the contents of that hard drive, you don't take it to a copy shop, or at least you take it to a reputable shop and ask about things like insurance, policies, and warranties.
The failure here falls on the mom and pop shop for losing the hard drive, no doubt, but it is entirely the purchaser's responsibility for ensuring the safety of their data, whether that meant backups or ensuring the store's policies provided a reasonable expectation of safety for contents with that kind of valuation. While we might feel more inclined to trust mom and pop shops over big name stores, accidents happen and people make mistakes in both places and it's the buyer's responsibility to account for the resulting problems.
It sounds to me like the mom and pop shop went above and beyond, probably under duress, by settling for a small value over and above what the drive was worth, even though their policies and disclaimers probably explicitly limit their liability to lower values. Now they should sell the gal at low cost a backup system of some kind, media to use it, and training on how to effectively value and safeguard data.
RE: You are not a computer store owner
John Rizzo, you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. Following stated procedures requires:
1. Design a form. One-time investment of an hour work. Paper - one cent. keep a folder with signed sheets - if you are organized - 1 cubic foot of storage for a year of sheets. If you are disorganized - well that's your fault.
2. same as 1.
3. put a masking tape with the date unit can be thrown out on. Depending on amount of business and how much equipment gets left by customer for disposal (trust me not that much, i've been in the industry for over 5 years) - maybe 3 cubic feet of storage. As for time - it takes 15 seconds to put a label on, and then maybe another 30 seconds to place into storage area.
4. One or two large harddrives. Trust me most people use no more than 20 GB of data, so for a one time investment of 2 500GB drives ($120 each) you cover that point entirely.
5. Customer service. We always do the same, this way we avoid the claims of type "You didn't do this. You gave it to me broken". That way we show that system leaves our store fully functional. Also it saves us from teaching people over the phone on how to use new stuff/where to find their data. Costs us 10 minutes of time, but saves us from hours of potential headaches. This has been implemented because we used to get headaches.
And oh my god he put an apostrophe where it didn't belong - doesn't change the point. You just felt like bashing someone. i can tipe with complit disrigard for speling punctuaton ant stil have a point that wil leave u feeling like an idiot
Computer Store is more at fault
Kudos to the store owner for his proactive policies.
This should be treated more as a case of malpractice than simply losing a photo to be copied. Remember, MOST of the people who bring their computers in to be copied don't know their risks to judge the quality of work. Obviously losing data is not in the same league as amputating the wrong foot, but should prompt a review of policy.
People ask why it takes me 4 hours to copy a few files. My policy is to image any customer disc before I do anything that might be destructive. And that's why they pay for my service over the generic actions of mass merchandisers.
To all the tards that are
To all the tards that are saying these policies are implausible: He hasn't actually said when these imaging processes run. If he runs PING or Ghost on the customer's box overnight to make the image, then these policies are actually reasonable. Why not take the extra precaution of imaging each customer's drive if the image creation can run overnight without the need for a paid employee's supervision?
re: computer stores and policies on service
I've worked as a technician for at least 4 or 5 "mom and pop" type computer stores over the years, and currently have my own business doing on-site PC and Mac service and consulting work.
After reading this story, my first thought was, "Why didn't the store make their customers sign a waiver, absolving them from responsibility for lost data?"
Every time I've worked on computers for my customers, I've tried to make it clear to them that data transfer or recovery is something we take a "best shot" at doing for them, but no "guarantees" come with it. My primary goal is repair of a malfunctioning PC, so it will live to store and crunch data another day. If you haven't kept backups of your data, and defective RAM or a failing hard drive cause some of it to get scrambled? I can get that RAM or drive replaced for you. The data has a far less certain outcome.
Like you, I generally hold onto old, discarded hard drives for a little while too. I don't trust people not to have "one more thing" they totally forgot they needed, after they promised you "There's nothing on the old system I need to keep." But again, it's just something I do to "go the extra mile" for customers. I'd probably change careers if I actually got drug into a lawsuit over not doing it!
Wow
We've got seven spelling or grammar errors in 12 lines of text. What makes this person think he's qualfied to render an opinion on anything when he's obviously yet to master what he was supposed to have learned in the fifth grade?