Some less than honest data recovery companies will deliberately sabotage your hard drive…
This isn’t a myth, this unfortunately happens.
There’s a number of UK based data recovery companies that we’ll collectively refer to as Company X, that have a reputation at such practices. These companies have been taken to court, been the subject of TV programmes, been reported to the Office of Fair Trading…. but still they manage to trade…
From time to time we will get a customer who tells us they’ve send their hard drive to a Company X for data recovery, only for Company X to increase the price originally quoted by some 250%-500%. This is a familiar story and unfortunately, these companies do it all the time….
The way they operate is frequently as follows:
The customer contacts a Company X with a data recovery requirement
Company X diagnoses the customer’s hard drive over the phone and offers a great price to recover their data (typically £200-£300), plus, if Company X are unable to recover the data, the customer doesn’t have to pay a thing.
The customer sends their hard drive off to the company to have their data recovered
Once the customer’s hard drive arrives with Company X they find that (surprise, surprise) the fault is infact not what they first believed it was. They then requote the customer a much higher price (often more than double) in order to recover the data. This price will also contain a fee that is payable to Company X regardless of whether they are successful at recovering the customer’s data or not.
This of course is a complete scam. Company X never had any intention at all of recovering the customer’s data for £200-£300. That price was just used as a hook to pursuade the customer into sending their job to them. The customer’s job was always going to be requoted – and the customer can either pay or decline to have their data recovered. But it doesn’t end there….
Let’s say that the customer chooses not to proceed with Company X’s increased quotation and decides to send their drive somewhere else to have it recovered…
Company X will deliberately avoid all contact with the customer. They will not answer emails or return phone calls. They will do what they can to frustrate the customer into deciding they might as well pay the extra money and have Company X recover their data.
If the customer persists in demanding their hard drive be returned to them so it can be recovered somewhere else…
Company X will recover the data from the customers hard drive and store it on their own servers, and then…
Company X will then deliberately damage the customer’s hard drive in such a way that data recovery by any other company is frequently impossible…. This means the only option the customer now has of getting their data back is to use Company X to recover their data…
So, the moral of the story is choose your data recovery company with care, for example, Google the name of the company, followed by the word ‘review’ to see what other people have to say about them.