Pls Help: Dell have lost my old hard drive

Hammyman

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Except for "Dell
accepts no liability for loss of software and data" This is totally unreasonable when Dell walk away with the media. In these circumstances it is an unfair exclusion clause.

Wrong. If someone took away my hard drive right now, the documents are backed up elsewhere.

DVardysShadow

Hammyman wrote: »

Wrong. If someone took away my hard drive right now, the documents are backed up elsewhere.

That may be the case, but if you think I am wrong, you have got the wrong end of the stick.

JasX is claiming that Dell's terms and conditions make the customer responsible to back up data - which exonerates Dell from responsibility. This is generally true. But in this specific case, the exclusions are unfair. The repair has been done on customer's premises, the HD in question is the property of the customer - and the Dell representative has taken it without authority.

weegie.geek

So Dell owe him a HD, not the data.

Equaliser123

Wow some real "wise in hindsight" people on here.

From a legal perspective, Dell are in the wrong to have taken the HD. They are responsible for its return or, alternatively, compensating for both the hardware and the data.

Quantifying loss will be difficult but not impossible. Dell's terms will be subject to the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations. Given the circumstances, I do not believe they would be upheld.

weegie.geek

It's not a matter of wise in hindsight, the terms and conditions have always been this way, for pretty much every company, drive manufacturer and pc repair company. Data recovery from broken drives is very expensive. Drives aren't. Backing up isn't, in comparison with data recovery.

Backing up isn't a new concept. Us "wise in hindsight" people have been banging on about it for decades. It's not hindsight, we've been warning people for ages. Most clearly consider it such a tiny risk, or consider their data to be worth less than a drive or blank DVDs to back things up onto. Until people like you come along suggesting that they may have a legal case.

You're wrong though, quantifying loss will be easy, given that the loss is of a broken hard drive, which was taken away in error BECAUSE the dell tech was there replacing it because it was broken. The value of what was lost is that of a broken hard drive. How would the OP prove what was even on it?

Given that this machine has had 2 drives replaced before this incident, the OP might (imo should) get a whole new replacement PC from Dell, but this just goes to emphasize that the OP was negligent in not backing up. This PC has a track record of drives dying in it. PSU fault, insufficient cooling, something like that.

JasX

I fail to understand why it is unfair for Dell not to require that the customer isn't being grossly negligent with their backup practices.

I'd like to see that try to stand up in court.

mkbswimstar

My laptop crashed and the hardrive broke just after I uploaded the photos! I didnt have time to download them elsewhere as my laptop wouldnt work.

weegie.geek

You deleted the photos from the memory card.

You ensured that the only copy was on the drive which subsequently died.

The drive which was in a PC which has had other drives die in it.

If you'd left them on the memory card you'd still have copies of them.

DVardysShadow

JasX wrote: »

I fail to understand why it is unfair for Dell not to require that the customer isn't being grossly negligent with their backup practices.

I'd like to see that try to stand up in court.

Until and unless the HD is in the customer's possession, there is no evidence either way as to whether the data is recoverable. So Dell must either return the HD or stand the loss over the data.

The unfairness is that you and others are arguing that Dell could [ab]use a reasonable term requiring that the customer backs up data to excuse them from the wrongful act of taking the customer's HD from the customer's premises.

If they had left the drive where they should have, then if the data is irrecoverable, the backup clauses would apply - and I think OP understands this and accepts the risk associated.

But by taking the HD away without authority, Dell have taken away those chances the OP did have. Dell's exclusion clauses cannot exonerate Dell from the consequences of a wrongful act.

DVardysShadow

weegie.geek wrote: »

You're wrong though, quantifying loss will be easy, given that the loss is of a broken hard drive, which was taken away in error BECAUSE the dell tech was there replacing it because it was broken. The value of what was lost is that of a broken hard drive. How would the OP prove what was even on it?

The loss includes the chance of recovery of the data. Dell have removed the evidence one way or the other as to whether there was a chance.

Remember that a HD does not have to be capable of running a PC for the data to be recoverable. So it is far from certain that there was no chance of recovery.