Sales assistant not completely honest, can i get a refund?

toffeecoated

I bought a Nexus 7 tablet in PC world. The sales assistant said i could add 1 year cloud storage for an extra £20. I asked what this means and he explained that i can back up 500GB of music/video/photo's etc on some sort of invisible drive in cyberspace that i can access from any computer anywhere in the world just by entering my e-mail address and a password. He assured me it is completely secure and is better than backing things up on an external drive because if my house is burgled i can still recover everything i backed up. I fell for it and paid the extra £20. I set up an account and ticked all the folders i wanted to upload. Three days later it was still uploading. I phoned the helpline and was told it will probably take a month to upload 500GB and i have to leave my computer on all the time until it has finished. After the first year i have to pay £40 if i want another year and £40 per year after that. I thought this was just a one off payment and if i had known it would take that long to upload i wouldn't have bothered. I'm very happy with the tablet but i want to cancel this cloud storage and get my £20 back. So the question is am i entitled to a refund or not?

ajones456

Sure, take it back and say you looked at the information and you feel it's not for you - we never had a problem returning clouds in our store.

toffeecoated

Thanks, I will take my receipt to the shop tomorrow. I can't actually return the product because it doesn't physically exist.

keyser666

There are other solutions out there that are far cheaper.

neilmcl

I think you need to edit the title. I can't see how the sales assistant was being dishonest!

[Deleted User]

£40 a year for 500gb is actually pretty decent value

Dropbox will cost you $499, Google Drive would cost you $249

Cloud storage is relatively expensive compared to 'regular' storage

pmduk

Your problems started by believing anything a sales assistant in PC World says!

Fosterdog

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Cloud storage is relatively expensive compared to 'regular' storage

It's not really more expensive than traditional storage, a portable hard drive is around £50-£60 for 500gb or £65-£90 for 1tb with desktop ones running at around £50-£70 for 1tb and £70-£100 for 2tb so like for like there's not much difference. I know you don't have to pay every year but they have their downsides too. They can fail, they can be stolen, they only back up one PC at a time without you physically disconnecting it and reconnecting to another, they can be lost or left behind when you need them, most tablets can't connect to them, you can't access your data away from home.

Cloud storage is actually very cheap when you consider all of the above, and the fact it backs up automatically and can get apps for most tablets or access your data through a browser. A lot also have document editors built into the browser too.

OP it shouldn't take a month to upload all of your data.

Firstly pause the current upload and run a speed test on your internet, mine is only 1mb/s and took just under 2 weeks to back up 836gb to online storage, this is a very low speed and most places in the UK are considerably more. Once you know your speeds there should be an option in the software for the backup that lets you set your internet speed and how much bandwidth you want to use for back up. Set this to the maximum for now.

It may make it almost impossible to browse while it is uploading but once the initial backup is done you can lower the allowance as it won't need to do a full bulk upload again and just backs up the latest additions and any changed files.

If you are really not happy you can try to take it back but once you've signed up and started to use it you may not be allowed to return it, all of the T&Cs would have been available before you signed up (and a tick box to say you read them) so you can't use the reason of misrepresented sale if you went ahead and tried to use it.

[Deleted User]

Fosterdog wrote: »

It's not really more expensive than traditional storage, a portable hard drive is around £50-£60 for 500gb or £65-£90 for 1tb with desktop ones running at around £50-£70 for 1tb and £70-£100 for 2tb so like for like there's not much difference. I know you don't have to pay every year but they have their downsides too. They can fail, they can be stolen, they only back up one PC at a time without you physically disconnecting it and reconnecting to another, they can be lost or left behind when you need them, most tablets can't connect to them, you can't access your data away from home.

Cloud storage is actually very cheap when you consider all of the above, and the fact it backs up automatically and can get apps for most tablets or access your data through a browser. A lot also have document editors built into the browser too.

OP it shouldn't take a month to upload all of your data.

Firstly pause the current upload and run a speed test on your internet, mine is only 1mb/s and took just under 2 weeks to back up 836gb to online storage, this is a very low speed and most places in the UK are considerably more. Once you know your speeds there should be an option in the software for the backup that lets you set your internet speed and how much bandwidth you want to use for back up. Set this to the maximum for now.

It may make it almost impossible to browse while it is uploading but once the initial backup is done you can lower the allowance as it won't need to do a full bulk upload again and just backs up the latest additions and any changed files.

If you are really not happy you can try to take it back but once you've signed up and started to use it you may not be allowed to return it, all of the T&Cs would have been available before you signed up (and a tick box to say you read them) so you can't use the reason of misrepresented sale if you went ahead and tried to use it.

I believe you've confused 'expensive' (i.e. the price) with 'value' (what you get for your money)

GB per GB - cloud storage is more expensive than 'hard' storage because you're buying a service, not a product. They should have informed the OP of the 'per year' cost when the service was purchased. Should a refund be allowed because it takes a long time to upload? No, probably not (and it won't take a week). Should they have explained a bit more about the service? Yes

I think cloud storage is great - i have 50gb of space on Dropbox (thanks Samsung S3!) and sync all my 'taken' photos with it. I would love to store all my photos in the cloud (about 120gb) but it is expensive for what it costs (It shouldn't cost that much for the storage allocation AND running a server) and I don't really think the 'cloud' is the right place for archiving large quantities of your data.

Remember - cloud is just a buzzword. It's just a service run on a server somewhere, connected to the internet

LE3

toffeecoated wrote: »

I bought a Nexus 7 tablet in PC world. The sales assistant said i could add 1 year cloud storage for an extra £20. I asked what this means and he explained that i can back up 500GB of music/video/photo's etc on some sort of invisible drive in cyberspace that i can access from any computer anywhere in the world just by entering my e-mail address and a password. He assured me it is completely secure and is better than backing things up on an external drive because if my house is burgled i can still recover everything i backed up. I fell for it and paid the extra £20. I set up an account and ticked all the folders i wanted to upload. Three days later it was still uploading. I phoned the helpline and was told it will probably take a month to upload 500GB and i have to leave my computer on all the time until it has finished. After the first year i have to pay £40 if i want another year and £40 per year after that. I thought this was just a one off payment and if i had known it would take that long to upload i wouldn't have bothered. I'm very happy with the tablet but i want to cancel this cloud storage and get my £20 back. So the question is am i entitled to a refund or not?

Hmm ... you bought a ONE YEAR service that you didn't realise you'd need to pay for at the end of the year?

I don't think you will have any luck getting your money back - when you signed up to the cloud storage you will have accepted the Terms & conditions - that was the time to read & decide it wasn't for you
£20 is well worth it for 500Gb of storage

toffeecoated

Thanks everyone. I got a refund without much fuss. I thought the sales assistant meant i had a year to upload my 500GB, not that i had to pay a yearly fee. I assumed that a lot of people especially people new to computers would not have 500GB to start with, but as we all know it soon builds up. My internet speed is 3MB. I decided to buy two external drives which i will use to back up everything i don't want to lose. I will keep one and leave one with a friend. I also have an old desktop computer that can be used as storage and packed away in the attic. Again, thanks for all your help.