Carbonite Backup Service – Unlimited ?
There are many new backup services now available on the Internet, and Carbonite is also available. Their service provides what they describe as unlimited backup, but as one blogger notes, their definition of ‘unlimited’ is suspect. The folks at Carbonite have a loophole in their license agreement, that should be examined carefully before signing up for the paid plan. On their site Carbonite states:
Only $49.95
Per Year -No matter how much you need to back up
But one blogger states that this is not the case. In this article it states:
Well I’m glad I didn’t make it past the free 2 weeks. They canceled my account. Here is the email they sent me:
Dear Carbonite User,
We regret to inform you that you are in violation of Carbonite’s Terms
of Use –> www.carbonite.com/termsofuse
Your pending backup size exceeds that of our average user by at least a
factor of 10. Your account has been disabled temporarily. You must
either reduced your pending backup size so that it falls below 100GB or
cancel your account. If you have already purchased Carbonite you may
request a full refund. Please let us know how you would like to proceed.Sincerely,
Carbonite, Inc.
The writer also has posted the TOS [terms of service] Carbonite provides:
YOU WILL BE IN VIOLATION OF THIS POLICY IF, WITHIN ANY MONTH, YOUR USAGE GREATLY EXCEEDS MORE THAN THE AVERAGE LEVEL OF MONTHLY USAGE OF CARBONITE’S PAID SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMERS GENERALLY. FOR PURPOSES OF THIS POLICY, “USAGE” MEANS THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF BANDWIDTH OR STORAGE REQUIREMENTS GENERATED BY BACKING UP YOUR COMPUTER, AS DETERMINED BY US IN OUR SOLE DISCRETION. (I.E., USAGE WITHIN ANY MONTH IN EXCESS OF MORE THAN THE AVERAGE LEVEL OF MONTHLY USAGE OF OUR PAID SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMERS GENERALLY).
So it seems that ‘unlimited’ according to Carbonite is: ‘YOUR USAGE GREATLY EXCEEDS MORE THAN THE AVERAGE LEVEL OF MONTHLY USAGE OF CARBONITE’S PAID SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMERS GENERALLY.’
So how much usage is over usage? What amount is a user supposed to use before going over? It would appear that Carbonite should specify the exact amount and not make it a hit or miss guess by their subscribers.
What do you think?
Comments welcome.
6 Comments
David Friend, CEO Carbonite, Inc.
August 13th, 2008
at 4:06am
Carbonite has NEVER cancelled a customer account for ANY reason, let alone abusing the unlimited backup space.
The “email” cited above is bogus. No such email has ever been sent by Carbonite.
The “Terms of Service” cited above have not been used for nearly a year and is not what is on our web site. See the Terms of Use link at the bottom of our web site home page, or go to http://carbonite.com/terms/. You will find a similar Policy in the TOS for every online backup company.
Termination and Fair Use Policy
YOUR USE OF CARBONITE PRODUCTS IS SUBJECT TO CARBONITE’S “TERMINATION AND FAIR USE POLICY.” THIS POLICY IS INTENDED TO ALLOW CARBONITE TO DENY SERVICE TO ABUSERS. USERS WHO ARE DEEMED TO BE “ABUSERS”, IN CARBONITE’S SOLE DISCRETION, MAY BE NOTIFIED PRIOR TO SUSPENSION OR TERMINATION OF THEIR ACCOUNTS, HOWEVER, CARBONITE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO TERMINATE OR SUSPEND SUCH ACCOUNTS WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE IN THE EVENT OF A POLICY VIOLATION. ANY FAILURE BY CARBONITE TO ENFORCE THIS POLICY WILL NOT PRECLUDE US FROM ENFORCING IT AT ANYTIME IN THE FUTURE, WHETHER FOR PAST OR CURRENT VIOLATIONS.
Ron Schenone
August 13th, 2008
at 7:55am
Hello David Friend,
Thank you for dropping by and clarifying not only the bogus email but also your companies policy.
I’ll be doing a follow-up to the original article and include your post.
Regards, Ron
Claire
October 30th, 2008
at 4:10am
1. I am inclined to believe what appears to be a client with no ulterior motives, over the CEO of the company.
2. The CEO just admitted that they DID use those TOS in the past, so why would they not have sent that email to the blogger in question?
Their TOS allowed only limited use, he exceeded that limit, I find it perfectly believable that as a result, they sent him that email.
3. Sounds like the new TOS is exactly the same, and would still terminate someone’s account, only it no longer specifies a definition of abuse.
What does this mean?
This means they can now cancel your account for even MORE reasons than the blogger stated before, and have made their terms even MORE vague and thus unreliable.
I’m glad I read that blog post, and the CEO’s response. I am still on my trial, but am now cancelling it and uninstalling the software. Besides, it was taking far too long, relative to the excellent upload speed that I have.
Mike
November 13th, 2008
at 2:13pm
I’ve been a paid Carbonite user for 6 monhts or so (maybe a little less). I’ve got Terrabytes of hard drive capacity (mostly decades worth of backed up home videos). I’ve selectively backed up 110GB of the most important data (none of it videos). One of my drives died recently and I had 85GB of that drive backed up through Carbonite. I successfully restored it to a subfolder of another drive (took 11 days to restore over a 10mb connection… It seemed to be capped at 1.5mb though).
All fine so far, until about an hour ago, I see that I now only have 2.5GB backed up?!?!?!?! I could understand maybe that the 85GB getting screwed up in the confusion of being relocated, but what about the other 22.5GB?
I sent Carbonite a question and am awaiting the response.
Ron Schenone
November 13th, 2008
at 3:22pm
Hello Mike,
Let us know if you get the problem resolved and let us know how the Carbonite support is.
Thanks, Ron
Matt
September 17th, 2009
at 8:43pm
Carbonite sucks if you have video. That is all.