Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

blog.dropbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 151 posts

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#91

Post by panarky »

jamesbritt wrote: post #66

Dropbox is morally corrupt and support for them by HN users is disappointing. I wrote to Dropbox and said I wanted to cancel my account and get a pro-rated refund because of their hiring of Condoleezza Rice. Her involvement in the Iraq war and the mass surveillance of Americans is deplorable. A few days after my request my account was converted to the free version, with the limitations of the free version. I could no…

I canceled my pro account when Dropbox first hired Rice, and I haven't looked back. It took far too long to get my data out, but it was well worth the effort.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#92

Post by stronglikedan »

jljljl wrote: post #71
encoderer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you entitled to a refund? You disagree with their hiring policies? You already paid the $99 for 1 year of service. You already bought it. It's done. Your option is to cancel at renewal or not. That's my take, anyway. I also asked for a refund when Google announced their far cheaper plans for GDrive, and this just a month after I renewed. They told me the same thing -- a policy of no partial refunds. So I aske…

If OP's account is true, the took away the features but then refused to provide a refund. At best, that's a pretty serious customer service fail.

That's not what OP said. The conversion to a free account and then back is not related to the refusal to refund his money. They temporarily took away paid features, but only because they botched his cancellation/refund request. When he pointed out their confusion, they corrected it. He didn't get a refund because they have a no refund policy.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#93

Post by jamesbritt »

dabernathy89 wrote: post #73
jamesbritt wrote: post #66

Dropbox is morally corrupt and support for them by HN users is disappointing. I wrote to Dropbox and said I wanted to cancel my account and get a pro-rated refund because of their hiring of Condoleezza Rice. Her involvement in the Iraq war and the mass surveillance of Americans is deplorable. A few days after my request my account was converted to the free version, with the limitations of the free version. I could no…

> It almost funny that they would not even respect differing opinion on their hiring of Ms. Rice and graciously offer a refund to those offended by such a move. I'm not surprised at all that a company doesn't want to refund you because of a political disagreement you have with them.

I'm not surprised at all that a company doesn't want to refund you because of a political disagreement you have with them.

What's important here is how they handled this. A company can issue a refund anytime it likes, the ToS notwithstanding. Those are rules they made up.

Telling me that it is impossible to issue a refund is just lying. It's not impossible; it's very doable.

If they (or any company) deliberately choose not to issue a refund they should state it like that, in plain language, not pretend that they have no choice in the matter.

Likewise with botching my account downgrade; only after I pointed out there error did they restore the quota but then acted like it never happened.

It isn't simply the lack of a refund, it's the bogus way they did it. Actions like this reveal the character of a company.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#94

Post by fein »

dang wrote: post #88
fein wrote: post #26

Is there a reason the old thread was killed and this up in its place? I thought the sales page contained better information than the blog post. That aside, I feel this needs to be brought up in every Dropbox thread: Get rid of Condoleezza Rice and I'll happily use your product.

The previous thread set off the HN software's flamewar detector. No moderator touched it.

Thanks for the insight.

Was this thread then manually flagged as "noflame"? It seems that the general sentiments on HN lean toward the "very critical" spectrum whenever dropbox is brought up, which seems like it would set off the flamewar filter constantly.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#95

Post by jamesbritt »

sheetjs wrote: post #83
encoderer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you entitled to a refund? You disagree with their hiring policies? You already paid the $99 for 1 year of service. You already bought it. It's done. Your option is to cancel at renewal or not. That's my take, anyway. I also asked for a refund when Google announced their far cheaper plans for GDrive, and this just a month after I renewed. They told me the same thing -- a policy of no partial refunds. So I aske…

There are two logically consistent ways of handling this type of request: A) Pro-rate the cost and immediately drop down to a free tier or cancel the service B) Disable renewal, but keep the same level of service until the renewal date. According to OP, he was knocked down to free tier but not issued a refund. That is incredibly odd, given that he already paid for the service

According to OP, he was knocked down to free tier but not issued a refund. That is incredibly odd, given that he already paid for the service

To be clear: The knocked me back to the lower free tier and quota, and only restored the quota a few days later when I saw no refund and complained.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#96

Post by rogerbinns »

Dropbox having good Linux support is a big reason I use them personally and professionally (both paid).

But geez do they mess other things up. For example you can only share top level folders. We have to share with various outside parties and that limitation leads to a very cluttered file structure.

The solution for multiple accounts is beyond annoying. The correct way of doing it how google does it - you provide however many sets of credentials and can then easily select the current set to use/view. Dropbox do this idiotic thing where you tie your personal one into a business one, then logging into the latter also logs you into the former and everything works as though it is one account, with enforced folder names. I'm sure there is some weak justification about how this prevents issues with free accounts, but making paying users have a horrible time isn't the way to achieve that.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#97

Post by rsync »

jamesbritt wrote: post #66

Dropbox is morally corrupt and support for them by HN users is disappointing. I wrote to Dropbox and said I wanted to cancel my account and get a pro-rated refund because of their hiring of Condoleezza Rice. Her involvement in the Iraq war and the mass surveillance of Americans is deplorable. A few days after my request my account was converted to the free version, with the limitations of the free version. I could no…

If only there were a cloud storage provider that took a strong, substantive stand against government surveillance and supported true security and privacy for their users.

As long as we're dreaming, wouldn't it be great if you could use this make-believe product with standard unix tools on the command line, and access over SSH ?

I suppose a fanciful firm like this would offer a deep "HN readers" discount to anyone that asked.

If only such a company existed ...

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#98

Post by rsync »

StavrosK wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://rsync.net/

Thanks, but both of those are extremely expensive for backing up photos and various files (100 GB worth).

Just a note since we're on the topic ...

- HN Discount for new customers is 10c per GB, per month. No charges for usage or traffic, etc.

- We just began announcing 3c pricing for 1PB and above. That may be more space than you require, however.

We've adjusted our pricing quite a bit in the last 30 days in conjunction with offering our PB filesystems, etc.

It's always worth emailing us.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#99

Post by jamesbritt »

encoderer wrote: post #70
jamesbritt wrote: post #66

Dropbox is morally corrupt and support for them by HN users is disappointing. I wrote to Dropbox and said I wanted to cancel my account and get a pro-rated refund because of their hiring of Condoleezza Rice. Her involvement in the Iraq war and the mass surveillance of Americans is deplorable. A few days after my request my account was converted to the free version, with the limitations of the free version. I could no…

Why are you entitled to a refund? You disagree with their hiring policies? You already paid the $99 for 1 year of service. You already bought it. It's done. Your option is to cancel at renewal or not. That's my take, anyway. I also asked for a refund when Google announced their far cheaper plans for GDrive, and this just a month after I renewed. They told me the same thing -- a policy of no partial refunds. So I aske…

You already bought it. It's done. Your option is to cancel at renewal or not.

This is technically true.

In the bigger picture we should judge people and companies by what they choose to do, not by what they have to do.

Had Drobox even replied that they understood my complaint but decided that it did not warrant their making an exception to their ToS I might be less disgusted. At least it would show some sort of backbone. Instead they pretend their hands are tied. That's dishonest.

Re: Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

#100

Post by jljljl »

stronglikedan wrote: post #92
jljljl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If OP's account is true, the took away the features but then refused to provide a refund. At best, that's a pretty serious customer service fail.

That's not what OP said. The conversion to a free account and then back is not related to the refusal to refund his money. They temporarily took away paid features, but only because they botched his cancellation/refund request. When he pointed out their confusion, they corrected it. He didn't get a refund because they have a no refund policy.

Ahh I missed that point, my bad.
Post reply on HN