David

Mar 28, 2024

iDrives Fall from Grace

I had iDrive for 3 years and it performed well until Christmas 2023, that's when I renewed my computer and bought one with the latest Windows 11 operating system. I am not very confident about restoring and setting up and so enlisted a Technocrat to do the job for me! Which he did fantastically .. and quickly I might add. I asked iDrive if their software was W11 compliant and they assured me it was. Then came the Restore from the regular back-ups I had always done. That's when the trouble began! It placed the restored files and folders in odd places - possibly as they were saved from W10 - although I was assured their software would place everything back in the same or similar places and in the same order as they were saved. This turned out to be false.. but of course I didn't know it at the time! I then proceeded to do a back-up of the new PC, which took 3 days! Wow I thought, it is much slower than the old system. About 10 days later I got in touch as it wasn't working. A technician worked on it via a remote link, found a problem and fixed it! But it continued to baffle me, I kept finding files and folders in odd places! - then I found out why! The software had duplicated just about everything, thousands of files in folders, plus all the photographs and music and some of the folder names were similar but changed! There was over 200 Gb of duplication! I was gobsmacked! and went onto the cloud backed-up versions to see if I could see why. I discovered that somehow the original computer had been Linked to itself! I would certainly not know how to do that or why that should be necessary, it seemed to me that it was something their system had done! It took me approximately between 2 and 3 weeks to find all this duplicated stuff as I had other things to do, but I had to compare the folder contents with the other similarly named folders only to find they were in fact populated with differing numbers of files! So I couldn't just find similarly named folders and erase them, I had to check and compare every single one! Can you imagine the laborious and stressful job I had facing me? .. let alone the time it took! Then I contacted their Help again to report this HUGE problem, which was met with doubt and denial! I couldn't believe their attitude! Atop of this, their chat windows weren't working properly, I kept getting cut off (or dropped by the helper - I suspected - when it got difficult!), sometimes they left me waiting up to half an hour to check things, the chats were timing out, and to cap it all they told me I hadn't done any backing up since December, and this was now March! .. but I had! at least 12 or more - they were automated anyway -(unless my PC was off at the time of Auto back-up) but I always did them upon start up. I was then instructed to send an error report, I tried many times, but it just would not do what he said it ought to. The Helper insinuated I wasn't doing it correctly, but I was, I was following his instructions to the letter - and then said that he should use a remote connection to send it as I didn't know what I was doing! I was livid and insulted! At that point, the chat dropped - yet again - and so I closed it all down as I had been on line with them for almost 7 hours! The next day I tried again and the Error report went first time, which pointed, again, to their site or software - in my opinion. They finally got the back-ups working correctly, how I don't know. My subscription was due within days but I felt patronised and let down, and had lost confidence in their once reliable software! I then said that they ought to waive the due subscription About £80, but they said that was a billing issue who I should contact. I did, and explained about experiences. I was told they would look into it and call me the next day. It never happened. There is small print in their pricing section which says that you must cancel by hitting the link ‘Cancel my Automatic Renewal’ which I found and cancelled with one day to run. Their site then asks why you are cancelling.. so I explained, fully! Now, although I have cancelled on 22/3, I keep getting emails saying I need to contact them about a ticket numbered problem! It's funny how, reading other people's feedback, that they are also marking this company down and receiving very similar responses, saying they are ‘looking into it’ but clearly they are not! It looks to me like their days are numbered. Shame really, as I believe they were once reputable. If my experience is anything to go by, I would advise giving iDrive a wide berth. David