Hotmail Loses Customer Files

Rick Zeman writes "News.com is reporting that Microsoft's Hotmail service has lost customers' files 'due to 'system events.' The particular user cited, of course, has no recourse because of the broad disclaimers companies such as Microsoft hide behind; however, you are getting what you pay for. The scariest part of the article, however, is when a spokesman for iBackup, an Internet-based backup company, disclaims,'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."

Comments

Honesty

[FTL]

"The scariest part of the article, however, is when a spokesman for iBackup, an Internet-based backup company, disclaims,'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."

Scary? No, that's plain honesty. Which should be respected.

Do you honestly expect your backup provider to cover you in the event of a gamma ray burst in the stellar neighbourhood which vapourizes half the planet within 5 minutes? An extreme example to be sure, but 100% coverage is not realistic, nor is it financially desirable.

I have no respect for any company whose sales staff claim 100% uptime or 100% reliable coverage.

Re:Honesty

[gray code]

no, it's not reasonable to demand that they offer 100% coverage, however, if this is a service that costs real money, then if they dick something up, it is completely reasonable to expect reasonable compensation.

Re:Honesty

[That's Unpossible!]

I have no respect for any company whose sales staff claim 100% uptime or 100% reliable coverage.

Ummm... the ends of those sentence fragments are usually "... or your money back."

In other words, they aren't promising 100%, just an attempt at 100% with you being compensated if it's less than that. Obviously they have a financial incentive to keep it at 100%.

Scary?

[Rufus88]

The scariest part of the article, however, is when a spokesman for iBackup, an Internet-based backup company, disclaims,'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."

Duh. There are no 100% guarantees of anything in life. The only significance of any "guarantee" is the recourse the company gives you (e.g. your money back) if they fail to live up to it.There's no guarantee that your in-house backup system won't eat your data. There's no guarantee your brand new car won't explode. There's no guarantee that FedEx will absolutely, positively, not lose your package, let alone get it there overnight.

Re:Scary?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It reads to me that iBackup don't even guarantee that they will even back it up AT ALL. OK I grant that backups can fail, but not backing up at all is pretty sad for a service that has "backup" in its company name! Sounds to me to be a bunch of retards.

At least with FedEx, they will compensate you if they lose the package, provided you declared a value. I think $100 coverage is free with the shipment.

No guarantee

[pubjames]

"'We do not provide a 100 percent guarantee that the backup will take place' of customers' data being stored with them for a fee."

If they promote themselves as providing a backup service then it probably doesn't matter if they say they don't guarantee it in the fine print. They would almost certainly be legally liable for failure to provide the service as advertised if they didn't provide that service. There are legal customer rights which companies you can't get round, forunately. (At least in Europe, but I suspect it is the same in the USA).

Second account for backup

[gweihir]

Why not forward all email to a second account with a different provider for backup?

Its a consistant address

[nurb432]

With the way people move from their ISP from service to service, its nice to have a consistent email address as you float around.

True, you could just get your own domain and be done with it, but for the average Joe that may not fully comprehend the options, its not worth the expense nor the extra troubles..

Guarantee = money

[Jammer@CMH]

Yes there is, there are plenty of 100% guarantees. "We guarantee that we will provide service X, with quality of service Y. If we fail, you are entitled to financial compensation Z by the terms of this guarantee."

That is a 100% guarantee, but is not unlimited liability. Unlimited liability (in case of failure) is not something any business is eager to provide.

poor != moron

[br3itain]

A little wake-up call to the self-satisfied middle class types out there who can't fathom not owning a computer - there are a *lot* of people who can't afford their own PC, let alone subscribe to an ISP. They depend on free access in public libraries for their email (and free internet email accounts like Hotmail). It's pretty hard to back up your emails in that case (many libraries ban the use of floppy disks outright).

Yes, you get what you pay for, but when something like this happens it doesn't necessarily mean the individual is a moron, it means she can't afford anything else.

Re:poor != moron

[argStyopa]

Bah, sophistry.

If reliability was an issue, even FREE services can be used to provide a level of redundancy higher than burned media.

Yahoo Mail
Hotmail
123Mail
heck, I think even Marijuana.com offers a free webmail account.

Poor people aren't morons, but they may have to actually deal with their situation instead of demanding that the world do so for them.

When I *was* poor and had to rely on the bus or a crappy unreliable car (for example) I simply had to cope with the potential unreliability of my ride by having backup plans. It was a simple fact of my lack of resources, and a good motivator for me to change my condition.

No company will guarentee 100%

[Servo]

I'm in the professional backup/storage management field and can tell you this... NOBODY will give you better than 99.9% reliability guarentee. There are far too many things to break that no matter what, you are likely to either miss something due to a general outage or have a tape/disk go bad.

Very common

[nonameisgood]

1) people on shared computers
2) people with no computer of thier own
3) people who want access to the information from multiple computer or while away from thier own
Which includes many of the following:
a) college students
b) the poor
c) business people working at many locations and away from a fixed site (note that many networks previously used for internet access are now closed to personal laptops)
d) travellers using internet cafes during a trip

Re:Well, you know what they say...

[athakur999]

It's not unrequested. If you signed up for Hotmail, you agreed to get a few marketing offers. That is the price of using a free email provider instead of one that costs money.