Cancelled Online Cloud service - Section 75?

jamphi24

Hi
I was a customer of the cloud service Livedrive (avoid at all costs if your thinking of joining them). I was a customer since Mar 2010 on a recurring 3 year contract for £279.

Last year - I believe as I was on this package which is way cheaper than what you can join for now - they cancelled my account (along with many others) while only sending some generic emailing relating to bandwidth usage which was rubbish, they wouldn't respond to requests for further detail.

Considering many others seemed to have been kicked off the service and were all on the same package I presumed it was due to this fact.

They only gave 30 days notice which wasn't enough time to physically download all my stored data gained over 4 years (c10tb) - luckily I had some data on local backup and downloaded what was most important of the rest.

They promised a pro rata refund which I never received.

I have started a section 75 claim and my card company is saying they will only offer on a pro rata basis c£162 refund of my subscription paid in Mar 2013. Since I in effect lost 4 years worth of data and the fact I paid for a service for 3 years from Mar 13 I believe I should be inline for at least a full refund of £279 and I actually think there is a case I should receive a refund of the £279 I paid in 2010 and compensation also.

I asked the credit card company that if I bought a tv and it broke after a year surely i would be able to get a full refund, so this shouldn't be different and they said that even that wouldn't happen it would be pro rata refund. Is that true?

Do you think I have a case to fight my credit company and take to financial ombudsman or the pro rata of £162 is fair?

Thanks for help

visidigi

The CC company are right, you are entitled to a pro rata refund for the service they didn't provide because the closed your account.

Collabora

A service and essentially a virtual server as livedrive/web hosting is worked out different to a physical item, as you have had use of part of the service that cant be returned, while with a TV you can return that and get a refund, so a pro rata refund will be for the part of service you have not yet used

Fosterdog

As with most things you will struggle to get anything for lost data as they provide a backup service, you should have the data somewhere else. Never ever keep just one copy of important data, it should always be kept in at least two places

George_Michael

jamphi24 wrote: »

I asked the credit card company that if I bought a tv and it broke after a year surely i would be able to get a full refund, so this shouldn't be different and they said that even that wouldn't happen it would be pro rata refund. Is that true?

What you were told by the CC company is correct.
If the TV failed after a year and the retailer or credit card company decided to refund you, they don't have to offer a full refund of the original amount you paid.
They are entitled to make a deduction for the time that you had good use of the TV.

Trinitrotoluene

I'll chime in with a different view on this. I'm not defending livedrive, they do advertise an "unlimited" service with provisions for bandwidth limitations.

That said, I work in that sector somewhat and just calculated a rough monthly cost for storing 10tb of data, and you'd be looking at around £150 a month, and that is cost price so you can't really be surprised that they cancelled your service. Granted, they did advertise it as unlimited so that is their fault. What on earth were you storing on there!?

You say the bandwidth bit is rubbish but I don't think it is. 10 terrabytes over 1095 days (three years) means you uploaded at least 9.3 gigabytes of data a day, which personally I think is excessive. At current bandwidth pricing that probably cost them around £400 to transfer that amount of data over the course of your three year contract.

I'm genuinely intrigued what you were storing on there.

AJXX

Trinitrotoluene wrote: »

I'll chime in with a different view on this. I'm not defending livedrive, they do advertise an "unlimited" service with provisions for bandwidth limitations.

That said, I work in that sector somewhat and just calculated a rough monthly cost for storing 10tb of data, and you'd be looking at around £150 a month, and that is cost price so you can't really be surprised that they cancelled your service. Granted, they did advertise it as unlimited so that is their fault. What on earth were you storing on there!?

You say the bandwidth bit is rubbish but I don't think it is. 10 terrabytes over 1095 days (three years) means you uploaded at least 9.3 gigabytes of data a day, which personally I think is excessive. At current bandwidth pricing that probably cost them around £400 to transfer that amount of data over the course of your three year contract.

I'm genuinely intrigued what you were storing on there.

Exactly! I was reading OP's post thinking 10TB? If you have 10TB of genuinely important data then get a proper backup system, not some cheap "cloud" backup.

How on earth do you accumulate 10TB of data, and, who in the right mind thinks it'll be safe on some cheap cloud storage system.

I've read a few complaints similar to OP's and they're all the same rant about bandwidth, yet they all store what is essentially an excessive amount of data 10TB+ so of course that is going to be huge bandwidth - these people don't understand how things work!

Livedrive are by no means perfect and I'm not defending them either, although the advertise the space as "unlimited" they do have a clause in their terms about excessive bandwidth.

Collabora

It would be cheaper getting a managed VPS or even a managed Dedicated server than paying the prices livedrive want