Very Frustrated Customer During Refund/Customer Support Experience: Be Cautious

First of all, I usually don't like leaving messages like this, and in fact this is my first time I have ever did this. My whole experience with Acronis's customer support has been the most frustrating experience I have ever had with purchasing a product. It really seemed to me nobody was listening to what I was saying and their goal was to ignore me and lengthen the process. All of this leading to a very disappointing experience and one I won't soon forget.

1. Purchased this product based on hearing it was the best image backup product out there. So I downloaded it and installed.

2. Immediately completed an image and tried to boot up from the rescue disk to make sure it would work. Unfortuantely, my internal drive or my USB drive would not work or be displayed. In fact, after I tried to use the rescue disk, I could not even reboot my PC without freezing at the bios screen. It took 10-15 times of rebooting before I got it back to life. It was a big sigh of relief since I actually thought my entire PC was corrupted.

3. Because of that initial experience and the possibility of it ruining my PC, I decided I wanted to see what options I had for a refund. I know I could have spent time troubleshooting it with support, but I lost confidence and I was just plain scared to death to mess with my PC. There was no way I was going to gamble.

4. I then entered into a LIVE chat session with support and asked what my options were and they indicated I could have a refund and pointed me to the refund link. I immediately completed the form and expected the refund process to be initiated.

5. Instead, I receive an email from support asking me about my problems and wanted to start troubleshooting. Since I submitted a REFUND form and did not try and contact support, I thought it would be clear that all I wanted was a REFUND, no troubleshooting.

6. I responded with email to them once again reiterating that I did not want to troubleshoot and that all I wanted was my refund. I even copied their own refund policy in my email explaining that I could do this within 30 days of my purchase. Since at this point I wasn't really mad at anybody (just thought this wasn't a good fit for me), I also provided support some of my details in case it could help others down the road.

7. Support responded to that email asking me to further troubleshoot. They once again completey ignored my request for a refund (even though this whole process started with a requets for refund). They did not even acknowledge my refund just continued to troubleshoot. To continue being a good sport, I did try what they asked and it still did not work. Even if it would have, I would still have wanted the refund because it would require working in a non-standard way.

8. Once again I sent an email back reiterating I only wanted a refund and was not interested in troubleshooting. All of my emails were very clear that I only wanted the refund.

9. I received yet another email from support now asking me if I wanted to substitute this product with another product. This is where I basically lost it. All of my emails made it clear that I wanted a refund, but they continued to ignore it and offer me everything but the refund. I once again sent an email saying I only wanted the refund and now I'm waiting for a response.

The funny thing about this whole situation was initially I was not mad that the software didn't work out, just assumed it was not compatible with my setup. I even would have considered purchasing it again in the future if I felt confident the issues would have been resolved.

However, after all this, there is not a chance that I will make a purchase from this company again. I made it clear so many times as to what I wanted and they have completely ignored me. I really hope I'm not being stringed out past my 30-day window of being able to return it.

 

They certainly should refund you but i'm not suprised they want to know more.
If all you did was as above then your PC would boot up as it always did (without any CD)
unless the installation of True Image has corrupted your primary boot partition, which i doubt.

Send the money back Acronis, ASAP

 

Your right about them probably wanting to know more and I would have been more than happy to provide them the details as I did, but at the same time they should have initiated the refund and at least acknowledged it. That was the most frustrating thing.

I was a little lost too as to what the CD could have done, but just wasn't willing to take anymore chances. Didn't want to rebuild the machine

 

So what actually happened when you booted with the CD first time and did you alter the bios for it to boot to CD or in any other way. I have my bios to boot from CD first if it can - of course usually you have to press a key to boot from cd normally if a bootable one is found (as far as i know).

After you got it to successfully boot up did you have any other problems with the system and was TI installed. Also, did you have to do anything to get it working or did it just happen?

 

When I rebooted, the screen would just lock at the BIOS screen and sit there. Would not go any further. I did nothing special to get it working again, but continued to reboot 10-15 times and then just started to work. I did not have that problem before I used this program and have not seen the issue since. So I'm pretty confident I don't have any bad hardware/software.

I made no changes to the BIOS whatsoever. In addition, my machine is only a week old so not much chance of conflicts or non-standard things cluttering it up.

I'm sure it is possible through prolonged troubleshooting that an answer might be learned, but once again I just lost confidence and was not comfortable continuing with it just in case during that process my PC could be harmed, especially with no way to restore the image if it did

 

mmmm, my PC is 5 years old and XP, not sure what these new fangled pc's do at boot up anymore!! I'm just confused at this point how it stops at the Bios screen cos I would have to press the delete key to get to that - I guess you mean the initial screen which displays the bios version and manufacturer and whatever, before the memory is checked and disk drives located.

Tis a strange one that. Someone will know something.

Sorry you have lost confidence because the software is very good and although I do have an issue with it still pending, I'm very happy and would recommend it to anyone. I've been using it for about 6 months and have restored a few times without any trouble.

Good luck anyway

 

Thanks...I'm hoping it gets resolved soon.

 

Well just from an academic point of view; from what you say about your system being only a week or so old, it would seem that maybe your chipset may be the problem in that the Linux environment used by the rescue CD doesn't have the appropriate driver to hand.

It is also possible if this is a brand name machine, that they may have a BIOS or utility running at boot up, that throws a curve at the rescue CD.

Just for others, there are a couple of ways to possibly get around this.

1. Once the cause has been found, Acronis can provide you with a custom boot CD just for your system. The drawback on this, is when an upgrade comes out and a new CD is required as it means asking Acronis to make another CD - unless of course the upgrade CD now works!

2. For those that don't want to do that, and don't want to make a Windows environment boot CD, there is a slightly more long winded option.

A) Install Windows or if a brand name machine run the re-install utility.

B) Either download or have on an external drive a licenced copy of TI - install this to the re-installed system.

C) Restore the system using TI from within Windows.

Colin

 

I'm sure they could have come up with something custom, but that is not what I want in a product. As you mention, everytime in the future I would have do something special. Too much work for an off the shelf package.

Once again, I understand there may be conflicts between my system and the software. That was not my issue and I accepted that. I was more concerned with the whole process to get the refund.

I'm pleased to report I did receive an email this morning saying my refund would finally be processed.