The Victim of Poor Customer Service

I have been working with Acronis "Technical Support" for weeks to have a corrupted image problem fixed. It is very apparent that the technicians are not taking the time to read my E-Mail responses. And when you reach the end of your patience you cannot receive a refund, they point you to a website of a company called Element 5, who hass a compant policy not to answer the phone. Do not by Acronis products unless you are prepared to provide your own technical support.

 

Hello Steve and others --

Please, let me clarify the things a bit.

We do try our best to ensure that our customers get the best support we can offer. Sometimes we fail to do so and I must say that neither the customer nor our company is happy with that. Moreover it would be stupid for our company not to try to bring a better support as it would lead to more customers and therefore more money to the company.

As for the refund procedure - if the product is purchased through element5 online store the order is refunded the way you described, indeed. There is *no other* way to proceed with the refund in this case. If the product is purchased through Digital River online store - the refund is being taken care of by Acronis itself. I'm not going to justify anything as I know that in this concrete case the customer was treated not the way he should be, but believe me, that wasn't and will never be done intentionally.

So I'd like to apologize for what happened. Also, if you will have any problems with refunds or other sales-related questions (not technical ones as they in most cases require a thorough investigation) you can write me directly at ag-at-acronis.com and I'll do my best to assist you or will ensure that the inquery is being taken care of ASAP.

This forum also helps to draw my (or my colleagues) attention to your problems.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Anton Gromov
Support Supervisor

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd. Suite 213
South San Francisco
CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com/

Acronis... Compute with confidence

 

Anton,

You are the one who provided a link to Element 5, Acronis problem #144197. As mentioned in my reply, the Element 5 folks do not provide a link, option, or directions to a refund procedure, you need to request refund procedures. I have requested a copy of their refund procedures but no response. It is obvious to me and I hope members of this forum that the refund process is designed to discourage users and in long run adds to Acronis bottom line. Bur every once and a while you run into a customer, me, who is willing to spend as much energy as necessary to recover my investment. Thank you.

 

Obviously more than you succeed at doing so. The support in the forum appears to have all but disappeared as well as the total and complete lack of support via E-mail. This forum is riddled with unsatisfactory support stories. You would think that you would at least take the time to sanitize your own "official" support forum of this kind of negative information but you're even too lazy to do that.

ALL WE WANT IS A WAY TO GET A REFUND THAT DOESN'T REQUIRE OUR SEEING OUR OWN BLOOD SPILLED.

 

Hello All --

I would like to emphasize it once again. There is *no* other procedure to proceed with the refund other than to request it the way I provided if the product is purchased through the Element5 online store. If it is purchased through Digital River one - it's another story (btw, our "main" online store is run through DigitalRiver).

As for "sanitizing" the forum - neither I, nor my colleagues will do it as we would better put our efforts on *helping* or *assisting* our customers. However, I do agree that lately I am visiting the forum less frequently, but quite soon there will be another person from the Acronis company who will be visiting it as often as I did before and hopefully will provide you with all the support you need.

As for "forum being filled with unsatisfactory support stories" - I must say I'm not happy with that, indeed, but you must think about thousands and thousands of those who don't write here, cause... they got no problems witht he software, and thus have no need in requesting any help. Please, believe me - we are working hard to eliminate the current glitches in the product as it is better both for us and our customers.

Thank you for understanding.

--
Best regards,
Anton Gromov

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd. Suite 213
South San Francisco
CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com/

Acronis... Compute with confidence

 

Anton,

The only reason that I have chosen this venue to air my complaints is that the company (Acronis/Element 5) have been unresponsive. By simply directing me to a similary unresponse Element 5 provisioning service just reinforces my determination for a resolution.

Acronis cannot offload their problems to Element 5, until I receive a refund the problem sits squarely on the shoulders of Acronis.

 

Hello Anton. I went to the Acronis True Image 8.0 website via a link that you provided in another thread. I clicked on the "Buy" button and was taken to an on-line order form on the www.secure.element5.com website.

Can you please explain, therefore, what you mean by "(btw, our "main" online store is run through DigitalRiver)"?

Thanks & regards,
Stro

 

Hi Stro,

If you click on the link in Anton's signature it will take you to Aconis home page. I just checked it now myself, and if you click on the "Buy Now" button beside Acronis True Image 8.0, Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0, or Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 you will see it does go to digitalrivers.

The one that goes to secure.element5 is the "Buy Now" button beside Acronis True Image Server 8.0.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

snap

 

Not trying to rub this in Steve1947 but I did get my refund today , at least for my single license purchase I still have a volume license purchase that I don't have a current status on but was told yesterday that it was being processed. I tell you this to give you hope that they will indeed refund your money if they say they will.

Now if they would just follow up on our initial contact concerning the issue that started this demise I would troubleshoot it with them and try to resolve it so others don't have the same problem.

 

Anton,
You must be kidding.

Thousand of flies eat **** - does that change anything on the edibility?

Your support - sorry, the support that your company delivers was not only poor but a real kick in the butt for example for those who purchased release 7.0 some weeks before your company decided to call (pretty much the same version without any significant functional enhancements!) it a day for supporting that "old" version and rename it to release 8.0. Well, this is actually not right - apparently some bugs were added.

I sent about four e-mails to Acronis "Support" asking for a resolution of some specific problems (like corrupted content on CDs, not being able to mount a CD backup, not working network access) and did not even get a single response! That SUCKS.

If your company is not able to get rid of all the bugs and problems that the software has, at least be honest to your customers and do not continue selling the version with false advertisement. This is not honest, in my opinion unlawful and definitely not the way to keep old and gain new customers.

If the workload is getting too high, developer quit etc. - maybe it is time to be open with the issues list and tell everybody what is being worked on and what the priorities are (besides selling more crippled versions).

Tom

 

Update,
I have been notified that Element 5 will isse a refund, issue closed.

 

Excusez moi?

You should make sure you have proper support in place. If you can't spend time, you should haven taken care of a back up resource before you all started your company. You can't just say "don't have time to support you"... To me it looks as fraud; a business transaction under applicable law requires both party to fullfill their obligations. We did by paying money, you don't. Looks like lawyer material to me.

 

but you must think about thousands and thousands of those who don't write here, cause... after reading all the support horror stories over here, they don't even bother to complain here, just take their losses and move on to a decent product with decent support.

Think about consumer behavior before you write ...

 

What's up Acronis?? Even too lazy to answer to such complaints

It is annoying to see how you treat customers.

I sent an e-mail regarding the support question I sent about a month ago (no need to mention that there was no response at all) and also asked for a solution in this "your" "support" forum.

Nothing led to any reaction on your side and I am pissed off enough to take legal steps in case you will not refund the money or at least take care about the open support requests. Yes, it is "only" about $30 - which does not really hurt me - but I will not accept the false advertisements and non functionality of major parts of your product.

If you are interested in avoiding trouble from my side, check your support case #144941 and take appropriate action.

 

I could not say about now, but on August 1 I bought True Image 8 from Element 5, which (looking at the bottom of the email) is
"element 5 - a digital river company
http://www.element5.com"

 

Hi,

I am one of those who didn't bother to complain here!

I tried to contact Acronis directly, but no success.

I have TI7 and I could never use it, but after reading all the problems on this forum, I decided to move to a product where I could get support.

I lost $49.00 but I will never buy anything from Acronis anymore...

 

"I decided to move to a product where I could get support".

Just out of curiousity, what product was that? One of the reasons I chose Acronis was because at least they do have a support forum and at least they do show up here once in a while, and at least they do have downloadable updates once in a while.

But if you know of a similar product with better support, I seriously would be interested in knowing what it is. I've read some horror stories about Ghost 9 support (or lack thereof).