Apple Wiped my Hard Drive

[yg17]

The complicating factor is that the employee in question did not have the authority to enter into that agreement on Apple's behalf, and should not have done so.



YG - read the posts again. The point is that the OP DID have another option, a data recovery service, and he asked that if it was a dead hard drive, that Apple stop repair and allow him to retrieve the drive to send to the expensive bit-wizards. He was denied that opportunity.

IMO I would not have sent it in in the first place, but send the drive for recovery first if the data was irreplaceable. But you have to balance that against a recovery bill of $1000 - $5000 at TotalRecall or ActionFront or DriveSavers. It is also a case of warranty vs. data. If you claim on the warranty, you lose the data. If you recover the data, you lose the warranty.

My bad, I just glanced over the thread.

But for the price of some of those data recovery services, you're better off going back to Europe and taking those pictures again.

 

[NEENAHBOY]

It's rather absurd to blame this guy

No, it's not. It states very clearly on the AppleCare repair form that they cannot be held responsible for loss of data. Now, obviously, the original CSR screwed up and shouldn't have guaranteed that his data would not be erased, but come on. They require a signature on the form, and he should have read the form. Period.

Also, I've learned from experience to never trust a low-level CSR to set up a repair and feed me all correct information, so I always ask to be transferred to a product specialist. FWIW.

 

[emaja]

...you have to balance that against a recovery bill of $1000 - $5000 at TotalRecall or ActionFront or DriveSavers...

That sure makes that $250 investment in a FireWire drive and SuperDuper look trivial.

Maybe I am just cynical, but I would never trust anyone with my data. I am hyper-paranoid about backing up so I will not lose anything. I lost many pics several years ago and fully learned my lesson then.

Maybe it is karma, but I have not lost a single thing since using a regular backup regimen.

 

[drake]

The complicating factor is that the employee in question did not have the authority to enter into that agreement on Apple's behalf, and should not have done so.



YG - read the posts again. The point is that the OP DID have another option, a data recovery service, and he asked that if it was a dead hard drive, that Apple stop repair and allow him to retrieve the drive to send to the expensive bit-wizards. He was denied that opportunity. That's what he is aupset about. Apple should have told him "No" up front rather than trying to be helpful. Of course, we might have gotten a thread about how Apple "forced" someone to pay for their own data recovery on a drive that was under warranty. Who knows? Just that (from a service point of view) going beyond the normal procedures to help someone is almost guaranteed to bite your @## before its over. The system does not accommodate deviation well at all.

IMO I would not have sent it in in the first place, but send the drive for recovery first if the data was irreplaceable. But you have to balance that against a recovery bill of $1000 - $5000 at TotalRecall or ActionFront or DriveSavers. It is also a case of warranty vs. data. If you claim on the warranty, you lose the data. If you recover the data, you lose the warranty.

If he hasn't over-written the memory cards, he might have a very good chance of getting the images back off of those without expense.

 

[Felldownthewell]

The complicating factor is that the employee in question did not have the authority to enter into that agreement on Apple's behalf, and should not have done so.

The employee is paid by apple, and even though he may be the lowest of the low on the totem pole, he still has a responsibility to both the customer- to make him happy, and to apple- to keep their good name out of the mud.

I don't know; apple has SOME responsibility to the OP, even if only because of the mistake of an employee, but I wonder to what extent they have to help him. It is not as if they can give him the pictures back, but they should at least say sorry, if only to show that they do, in fact, care about customers.

 

[Shacklebolt]

Apple has actually agreed to compensate me somewhat. I'll be more specific tomorrow after I talk to customer support.

And on a side note, people have mentioned data retrieval as a costly process, which isn't surprising. But I was definitely willing to spend a significant amount of money to get photos off my hard drive. I don't know about 5k, but definitely quite a bit.

And on a side note, I know people are being critical of me for not backing up more regularly. As it was, my entire music library was saved, all of the programs I really cared about (MSOffice, etc.) were saved, what I lost was my photo library. Maybe I was being idealistic to think that the hard drive of a 3,000 dollar laptop couldn't possibly die TWICE in the first year of me owning it, but whatever, I guess it's not a mistake I'll make again.

 

[dogbone]

Shacklebolt,

I was going to suggest legal action and if they have already offered some kind of compo then that only suggests to me that you should pursue the action more vigourously. I'd asked for a replacement trip at the very least.

On a more philosophical note though, you must bear in mind that you cannot change the past and any regret is exactly a wish to change the past. Also neither you nor anyone else can know the full consequences of you data being lost. It may have transpired that if they did not erase the drive you may be dead now, because everything would be different. You really don't know.

 

[brbubba]

No, it's not. It states very clearly on the AppleCare repair form that they cannot be held responsible for loss of data. Now, obviously, the original CSR screwed up and shouldn't have guaranteed that his data would not be erased, but come on. They require a signature on the form, and he should have read the form. Period.

Also, I've learned from experience to never trust a low-level CSR to set up a repair and feed me all correct information, so I always ask to be transferred to a product specialist. FWIW.

Loss of data and willful destruction of data are two very different things. In the first case the techie is trying to fix your computer and in the process the drive dies making your data not retrievable by normal means. In the second case the techie removes the drive and throws it out against instructions stating not to do this.

OP definitely learned his lesson. What confuses me though is this, if the tech support couldn't fix the system over the phone what exactly did you think was going to happen when you sent the system in. I don't have much experience with macs, but I have extensive experience with PCs and if there is a HD issue that I can't fix over the phone then one of two things is going to happen, the drive will, in almost all cases, be formatted or replaced.

Hope they offered you something nice.

 

[Music_Producer]

And, *Thats* why you should use a Film Camera

Whenever I embark on a trip where I know I am going to take lots of pictures, I carry a portable usb drive in my backpack.. and always backup my photos from the laptop to this drive. Mind you, this little drive has nothing but photos on it.. no music, nothing else.

Of course, I have 2 more hard drives which I backup on as well.. I have learnt my lesson from computer failures and take adequate precautions. I am also thinking of buying one of those compact flash to cd/dvd burners.. I think its a wise investment.

If I were sending my computer to Applecare for servicing, I would never even 'assume' that they would follow my request..this holds true for every company, not just Apple. Like Fedex, when I was assured by their CSR that a package I sent to a fradulent buyer, would not be delivered.. lo and behold, the package was delivered the very next day!

The servicing department simply does not have time to handle requests, they are there to solve a problem, and not take care of the little "Oh but make sure you dont do this.. and that"

I understand how you feel, but mate, sorry.. NEVER take someone's word for it.

 

[Manddana]

I understand some of the pitfalls of sending a computer in to AppleCare, but I think that this particular case is beyond the beyond.

Last year, I spent about 3,000 dollars on my Powerbook G4 1.67/1gb/100gb/128VRAM/Applecare. Ever since, it has been giving me problems. My hard drive has broken (been unable to mount to the point of needing to be replaced) TWICE. This previous time, I had JUST returned from a trip to Europe (more or less a once-in-a-lifetime trip too). I had loaded about 650 pictures onto my computer and deleted them from my camera. 3 hours later, my computer was dead - whenever I tried to restart it, I got a kernal panic message. When I tried to use diskfirstaid, the problem couldn't be fixed. When I tried to archive and install, the computer couldn't even mount my hard drive to reinstall the software. I spent about a day on the phone with Apple, mainly worrying about ALL the data on my hard drive, some of which was backed up, but my more recent acquisitions (namely, my entire photo library (about 2500 pictures)) had not.

Finally, the tech who arranged the repair on my computer ASSURED me that my hard drive would not be replaced. More than that, he wrote down in my file (AppleCare history, I'm assuming) that my hard drive wouldn't be erased. Finally, to top it all off, when I sent my computer in, I left a physical note on the computer, saying "If you need to reformat my hard drive, you MUST call me first at xxx-xxx-xxxx." I recieved my computer two days later. My entire hard drive had been replaced and, I'm assuming, thrown away.

This is just beyond the beyond. Those photos were irreplacable, and I would have gone practically ANY end to have them rescued from my damaged hard drive.

The moral of the story is such - AppleCare, no matter what they say, no matter what they mark down in your file, no matter what physical note you leave and expect the m.f. people in the repair center to at least be human and pick up a phone, Apple has absolutely, positively, 100% ZERO RESPECT FOR YOUR DATA.

What I'm angriest about isn't that my hard drive was replaced. It was that I was ASSURED that it wouldn't be erased (which is what convinced me to send my computer in for repair before pursuing some sort of data retrieval) and it was erased anyway.

[doublepost=1496885050][/doublepost]I took my phone to the store and the employee that was assigned to help me was helping another customer and it felt he was in a rush so he told me before he attempted the factory reset to buy more storage to back my data up.
I recently had a trip to Europe and had 2500 photos and videos so I did so. I sat there to make sure all are backed up and when he was going to do the reset I asked him if all are backed up and he said I should not be worried.
I got home and I had only 580 of them saved and the rest was gone.
I called the store and was told to wait a day or two and if they aren't back I should return to reset the phone again. I went back and after the reset nothing was added to the library.
All the manager told me "sorry for your loss"
I called apple right away and the rep told me that I was rushed at the store and the back up was not complete.
Now I lost all my memories with my two year old and I don't have the time and money to make another trip to Europe to make up for it and bring back what has been lost.
The employee could tell me to go home and back the data up on my computer verses forcing me to pay for more cloud storage and laying to me about the complete back up.
Can anyone can give me an advise?

 

[Scorned]

11 years later? you need to use two different time machines. One is in the MacOS. The other, you will have to learn quantum physics to achieve.

 

[ActionableMango]

Can anyone can give me an advise?

For what you lost, restore from your last iTunes backup on your computer. If you don't have that either then you are screwed, barring some kind of grey market exotic data recovery method that can restore wiped files.

For the future, start backing up irreplaceable files.

 

[linuxcooldude]

One word: Backup.

 

[Derived]

Why is this thread for people who have never heard of a backup in the Mac Pro section? Statistically we have a lower likelihood of not knowing how to keep our stuff safe, I would think.

 

[DearthnVader]

Schofield's Second Law of Computing.

 

[ActionableMango]

Why is this thread for people who have never heard of a backup in the Mac Pro section? Statistically we have a lower likelihood of not knowing how to keep our stuff safe, I would think.

Not only that, but OP's issue back from 2006 is with a Powerbook, and the guy who resurrected this zombie thread this week is complaining about his iPhone. None of this has to do with Mac Pros at all.