Complaints

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• Initial Complaint

  Date:07/05/2023

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I took an SD card that seemed to have photos accidentally deleted yesterday. I was told.by phone by the company that they recovered about 2 thousand pictures. I am an amateur nature photographer. The company said they would load the two thousand pictures back on the now blank SD card that I gave them. I paid. I looked at the contents of the SD card and only got a few hundred pictures back with all the best missing. Over a thousand pictures had been stolen, and they knew I had no backup or way to prove the pictures were mine. They stole about a thousand pictures and there is an online market for this type of pictures. I made a police report. There is no way to know who else they have stolen from or what they may have taken beyond pictures customers had stored.

  Business Response

  Date: 07/11/2023

  ******, we are sorry you felt it had to come to this.  We did not steal your photos, nor would we ever steal anyone else’s data.  Period.  Before you arrived, we discussed that payment would be $60 if we successfully recovered photos but no charge if we were unsuccessful.  You arrived at the premises and handed off your SD card.  We used a PAID data recovery software that specializes in recovering photos and videos from SD cards.  Once the recovery process was completed, we informed you that just over 12 and a half gigs of data were recovered from your SD card (12.7GBs to be exact) and it was all put back on your SD card.  And yes, we did say it was over 2,000 pictures. 
  

  When you arrived to retrieve your recovered photos, we showed them to you on one of our computers and even offered for you to stay and comb through them to make sure they were all there.  You declined.  We also showed you that some files were corrupted, which is just a consequence of trying to recover deleted photos.  You said you understood this and did not expect all photos to be recoverable.  The recovered photos (both damaged and undamaged) were put in a folder separate from the camera’s DCIM folder.  You paid the agreed price of $60 and left with your SD card.  You called again shortly after leaving the premises to say you could not access the photos from your camera, and you had no other means of accessing the photos.  We asked you to return so we could move the photos into the camera folder.  You did return, and we moved the files over for you.  Before you left, we confirmed you were able to look through the photos from your camera.  You left again.
  

  An hour or so later, you called to complain you could not find a specific picture that we showed you was recovered on the computer.  We offered to put all the recovered pictures on a flash drive so you could view them easier from a computer, but you said you’d keep looking and hung up.  You called a minute later to inform me you found one of the pictures in question, and that was it.  We assumed you were satisfied with everything, but about an hour after the last phone call, we noticed you left us a 2-star review with little explanation.  Perplexed, we called you immediately and left a voicemail, asking if this was an error, and if not, to please call us back so we could make things right.
  

  The next day (Sunday morning around 8am), you called us back and began accusing us of stealing your photos.  We were in a dead sleep (we answer the phone 24/7, even when asleep) when you rang and deeply confused by why you were yelling at us.  You claimed that you did not have the 2,000 or so photos and that we stole the rest.  Not knowing how to answer this, we assumed maybe the total recovered files we saw during the recovery process was not all pictures but also other log files, meta data files or the like.  Without looking at what you were talking about, we had no explanation to give except that we gave you everything that was recovered and that the total amount of data was about 12.7GBs worth.  We even apologized that we may have assumed incorrectly about the number of photos, but we are in no way purposely keeping them from you or “stealing the best ones” for ourselves.  You then told us you filed a police report.  We were simply shocked at this because you gave us no chance to resolve your concerns before resorting to the police.  You instead turned around and changed your 2-star review to a 1-star smear campaign.  Even after your false accusations on the phone, we still offered to you to return, with the police, if necessary, to look for yourself at what pictures were recovered.  However, you continued to spread falsehoods and vowed to make sure we go out of business before hanging up on us.
  

  We recovered your data on July 1st.  You called us early on July 2nd with claims of us stealing your data.  It was not until July 7th that we took a second look at the folder of recovered files.  But we can tell you this now:  Each photo is labeled with a number.  It goes from “********” all the way to *********.”  So yes, there are over 2,000 pictures, and we never had any intention of keeping them from you.  If you truly do not see all these pictures on your SD card, I have no concrete explanation why without looking at the SD card.  We are human and make mistakes, and if we make one, we will take responsibility and correct it. But we did not maliciously and intentionally keep your files from you. We do not know what happened, but we do know that we did NOT “steal” your pictures, nor do we ever intend to sell them.
  

  Instead of allowing us to make things right, you vilified us as some company who extorts data from unsuspecting customers.  We are a literal “mom and pop” business, and our livelihood depends on providing the highest degree of customer service we can to our community to survive in these hard times.  The past reviews on Google and Facebook we’ve received clearly show we have integrity and provide quality work.  However, the past reviews you’ve left on these sites show you have a pattern of mistrusting people and assuming everyone is out to take advantage of you.  We are genuinely sorry you’re going through a rough time, but that in no way excuses you from making these wild accusations about a business that was trying to help you.

  We are still open to resolving this with you, but we have a feeling that you are not interested in a real solution.