For the record I never emailed Livedrive.com about the problems they were having, but I recieved an email this morning.
Dear Customer
You recently sent us an e-mail or submitted a question via our website
about Livedrive. We apologise for not getting back to you. We have had a far higher number of subscribers to our beta programme than we anticipated. We have listed the most common questions about Livedrive below. If your question isn’t answered below then please e-mail us again. We apologise for asking you to do this and can assure you any future e-mails will be answered promptly.How much will the service cost after the beta?
Livedrive is free to use during our beta period. The beta period is a chance for you to give us your feedback about our service and for us to ensure any problems with the service are found before we “go live” in January 2009. After the go-live date Livedrive will be available in two editions with prices ranging from approximately £40 per annum for the standard version to £200 per annum for the business version. Both editions will include unlimited storage. The business version will have multi-user support for small businesses. Please note we are giving this information as a general guide and it is subject to change. As a beta user, you may be offered a discount if you decide to keep your service once we go live. If you chose not to keep your service, you will be offered a period to remove your files from your account before it is shut down. Note: the above prices are in British Pound Sterling, equivalent US$ pricing will be offered to our US customers.I’ve been getting errors saying Livedrive can’t connect
Over the past week we have had to increase our server capacity to cater for the additional load placed upon our servers. If you retry you should find the software is able to connect.Firewall settings?
Livedrive requires ports 50234 and 50235 to be open on your firewall to the following IP address 84.45.62.202. We will be supporting SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxy servers in a future release.My L: Drive isn’t showing in My Computer
Check Livedrive is running. You can do this by opening the Control Panel on your computer and double clicking on Livedrive. Click ‘Start Livedrive’ at the top of the dialogue box.I can’t login
Please try again. Beta accounts were taking longer than usual to activate due to the unanticipated demand. If you still can’t login you can reset your password at the following URL: http://files.livedrive.com/resetpasswordDo you have a client for Mac and Linux?
We will be releasing a Mac version of our software during the first half of 2009. It will be available free of charge to all customers. There are currently no plans for a Linux version. Note that we will be offering a Java upload function from the web-portal over the next 14 days that will work on Apple computers.Best Regards
Livedrive Internet
I know they are still in Beta so I didn’t bother contacting them. I wrote about their site being down in a previous post. I believe I saw an article about thier site on Lifehacker.com. That’s the only reason I gave the online data storage a try. I’m still checking with them everyday to see if their service has improved. I haven’t seen any as of yet, but this email lets me know they are trying and probably do care about future customers. My only advice to everyone is not to put your trusted data on their servers, until they work the kinks out.
Hi,
We're way past our beta and we've been fully live for a while now. Check our forums out at http://support.livedrive.com/forums/
Regards,
The Livedrive Team
I might review your services again, since your product is out of beta.
It may be out of beta, but it still sucks. Lost files, broken upload manager, no way to verify data.. Live Drive is not safe for secure data. Not to mention, their customer service is nonexistent. There is no number to call, email responses take over a week, and LiveDrive doesn't understand the idea of making the (paying) customer happy.
any news on that mac client thing supposed to be launched during first half of 2009?
for livedrive? I can find out for you though.
DONT USE LIVEDRIVE. Why?
1. No Support Response
2. Files get corrupted
3. Files get lost
4. Desktop Client is unusuable on slower pcs (ie. netbooks)
5. Livedrive does not guarantee for the files. if your files get lost due to hardware issue at livedrive.com they are gone forever.
6. Livedrive lies on their customers (ie. they sayy they use encryption, actually the DO NOT)
7Livedrive staff can look at your data.
8. Livedrive can ban you any time and wihout prior warning and without violationg the ToS
9. FTP does not work consistently
and so on and so on…
Have a look at their forums at http://support.livedrive.com/forums therer you will see the truth.
DO NOT SE LIVEDRIVE. THEI ARE SCAMMERS.
awesome, and the PR people are rude also. They wanted to purchase the premium account and be refunded at the end of 30 days for my review. Most people would want a review esp. if their product was good. Apparently they know how bad this crap is they are trying to sell.
Dropbox is definitely the best service I've found like this, but unfortunately it's pretty pricey and there's no way to get unlimited data.
I agree with the above- Livedrive at the moment is not a viable solution for storing files. Download times via FTP are terrible (at least 4 times that of my regular FTP accounts). One good thing is the ability to stream audio and video, but unfortunately videos are not set to stream by default. You have to 'request conversion for web play back' for each file individually, which has to be done for each video file . Imagine having to do that for thousands of stored videos. Also it takes up to 12 hours before the file is ready to stream. All in all- getting better, but it should really still be in Beta. At the moment it's suprising that they can be charging so much money for such an unprofessional service.
They are money hungry. Actually I couldn't stand them in beta. Gmail rocked in beta. You just don't throw out a piece of crap and call it beta and expect people to deal with it.
Must have been an awful lot of people with problems demanding their money back. When I cancelled my account they didn’t even bother asking why, and just recently I got a “try us again” email. From the looks of things though as recently as a week ago people were still having major problems.
I know I left because I didn’t want to pay a bunch of money just to beta test their software.
I've been with them from the beginning and took them up on their discounted offer for beta testers. I was very unhappy during the beta, but saw it was getting better, so decided to stick with it. I am now glad I did, and it is nice to have all my mp3 and picture collection available online and backed up on my home desktop. The online mp3 playlist feature is awesome because i can play my music at work without downloading mp3s or listening to crappy online radio. The service has improved and while I probably wouldn't have paid for another year of this service a month ago, I am now convinced and will stick with it. (It is very network heavy tho – run wireshark while livedrive is running and the log fills up fast!)
We use livedrive to store files remotely I have also been using livedrive since beta and can confirm things are getting better and the service seems to be fairly stable for now although I probably do not use it to its full capacity.
One thing however that has also been consistent is their poor level of support there are no documented response times for support requests, problems submitted via their desktop software rarely get answered making me think the software does not reliably send them. Therefore anyone relying on this system for business use……….DONT for now anyway
Like most people on the livedrive forum I think its a good service if it worked and was supported well which it doesn't and isn't right now. If they address these issues then I think its a good solution
BEWARE, Livedrive still has many problems. The latest desktop client loses files, a replicatable fact. Go view their support forums if you have doubts; the truth is in there, and it's recent. Businesses should only use Livedrive if they don't mind losing data. We were fortunate enough to discover the problems early on, and are now using an alternative service.
Livedrive is a false front. They have PR specialists that have designed a fancy web site with fancy claims. Many are lies, or worded in such a way to cover up the truth. They claim data is encrypted, yet we have proven otherwise. There are features that were listed as “soon” 8 months ago, like a Mac client & iPhone app, but have yet to see any light of day. They posted a screen grab of the iPhone app, but it turned out to be merely a photoshop pic. They advertise 24 hour support response, but that response is an auto-reply. It will probably take months for your issue to be resolved. They advertise unlimited storage, but one user got his account closed because he had too many terabytes of files on their servers. Some users have complained about files disappearing, and Livedrive won’t acknowledge it, let alone fix it. FTP service was released for public use, but was plagued with outages for months. Bug reports are ignored unless enough people complain about a particular issue. In a recent desktop client release, instead of fixing problems, they just disabled features as a way to resolve them. They put forth a beautiful looking car, but under the hood, it is a jalopy.
Support forums?
Livedrive cut off private messages between forum users for no apparent reason.
A pair of days later they closed TOTALLY the forums. Forums URL now shows a message saying that forum is down for maintenance and that it will be available within 24 hours. It is a lie. The message is shown since 3 days ago.
I'm a Livedrive user but I think that they are going to disappear very soon.
I knew this company was horrible when it said it was down for maintenance and would be backup in 24 hours, weeks later they got it fixed, kinda.
This service is flat out crap.
I've been with them for a few weeks now on an unlimited pro account. Still uploading a lot of data so hard to say for sure what it'll be like in the end. So far i think it's a bit clunky and a bit buggy. More like what I'd call a beta version.
I love the concept though. I'll stick with them for the year probably and if it's not improved by then dump them.
I found this blog while trying to find the lost user forum. Looks like they pulled it because of the bad comments.
It does seen to have forgotten to upload a bunch of pictures right now.
.. I'll tell you what caused the forums to go down… some forum poster kept posting about the fradulent claims they make on there website dealing with encryption and response time. Then he started posting to the http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/ or something and staying people had rights.. after that many people started getting refunds.. then they pulled the site down.
They couldn't withhold those refunds becuase they had nothing to fight on… all the claims they made were false.
Quote from UK Gov:
"Should UK law apply your rights would fall under the Supply of Goods and Services Act (1982), which states any service provided by a trader to a consumer should undertaken using reasonable care and skill, and completed within a reasonable length of time if this has not been fixed beforehand. Where a price has been agreed for a service the trader should not charge above this price; if this was not fixed in advance a trader may charge only a reasonable price for the service.
Damages can be claimed under this law for any loss you have naturally incurred as a result of any breach of contract. These would need to be proven to the trader in order to claim monetary compensation.
If you feel that the trader has not adhered to all of these aspects, you may be able to suggest that the trader is in breach of contract and pursue a suitable remedy. Generally, it is considered reasonable that you allow the trader an opportunity to rectify the situation at no additional cost to you. You could offer the trader a reasonable deadline in which to complete the service, and warn that if this is not done you will have no take further action to enforce your rights."
Well guys… looks like you know the answer….
http://www.LivedriveLiedToUs.com
Someone is upset with Livedrive.
Someone is upset with Livedrive:
http://livedriveliedtous.com/
https://www.livedriveliedtous.com/
returns
livedriveliedtous.com uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is only valid for *.ipage.com
its a standard http page…. your not logging into a bank page or anything
http://www.livedriveliedtous.com
it has tons of info i found!! Even has cached pages recovered from bings engine!!! From before they wiped out the old forums!!
Tons of screen shots even showing they took away forums from new users!! its crazy!!!
It also shows how they proved encryption didn't exist in older clients.. and instructions on how to see what its doing on your computer!!! They seem to provide more support than livedrive support them selves!
I signed on to Livedrive right after they came out of beta and spent most of the remaining 6-1/2 months in misery until I demanded a refund. At the time, their support forums were full of complaints, legal threats, and unaddressed bug reports which were being picked up by search engine spiders and being littered across the internet. Shortly after that, they wiped their support forums clean, built their own forum software that could not be crawled by search engine spiders, and restricted access to only subscribed users. The forum is still pretty much the same, full of complaints and unanswered support issues, but now hidden from the general public or perspective new subscribers.
Knowing how incredibly buggy the service is and how dissatisfied everyone was in their forums, I began looking into why 99% of the reviews I found on the internet were positive. Most fall into the category of very casual users or reviewers who have used the service for a few weeks or so and don’t bother or have the time to verify their claims. If you use common tools to see what’s really going on behind their software, you soon find that you’re getting screwed.
I began writing replies to these positive reviews as my duty, I felt, to inform the general public of the truth about Livedrive. But I soon found my critical reviews being removed by review site moderators. I asked a few of them, and they said it was because they are afraid of being sued. Apparently LD sinks most of its money into attorneys & PR and very little into having talented developers on staff. My bug list I began when I signed on grew by the day and the feeble attempts by their junior developers to fix problems often only made them worse.
Livedrive is all about giving you the impression of being a good service through trumped up and controlled PR, carefully hidden truths, and legal threats. Beware of this Darth Vader of online storage services!
awesome input. I believe everyone is starting to hate this company.
I signed up in early 09 and anyone active in the forums remember what they did with me which certainly added fuel to the fire. Without notice they deleted all my files and closed my account because I was using too much space on my "unlimited" account. They "tried" to claim my files were infringing on copyright's but they had no idea of knowing if I was legally backing up my music and dvds or not.
Anonbit, come on, please be fair – if you really had 1000 GB+ of media files, are you gonna stand here and tell everybody that it was all legal? And that there was no "give-away" signature from a bittorrent site or whatever? What would it cost you on iTunes to buy a measely 60 GB worth of music? Either you are very, very rich, or you are just an angry guy who thought he could upload his bittorrents from the past 5 years and claim he was making fair use of the "unlimited" storage (which obviously pertains to personal documents, fotos, etc. and not a download of 10'000 isohunt files…)
Hey.. anobit.. your post is on livedriveliedtous!!!!
http://livedriveliedtous.com/blog/2009/12/more-ol...
Does it look familiar????
anobit.. they said in the threads that you should contact support to get your files… did they ever get them for you?? or did they just ignore you???
My account was deleted on July 10. After sending emails daily I finally got a response July 22 stating all my files were deleted. They finally responded to my July 15th email. (I basically copy and pasted the same sentence and sent it to support daily.)
On Wed Jul 15 04:57:27 2009, XXXXXX@XXXX.com wrote:
> I have not received a response from multiple request. Livedrive_matt
> stated to contact support to be given an opportunity to download my
> files from my account.
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: Livedrive <support@livedrivesupport.com>
> To: XXXXXX@XXXXX.com
> Sent: Fri, Jul 10, 2009 11:27 am
> Subject: Account Closure
>
>
>
> Dear XXXX XXXXX
>
> We regret to inform you that we have elected to exercise our right
> under our
> terms of service (section 6) to terminate your service with Livedrive.
> This
> action has been taken due to your breach of section 2, item 3 of our
> terms of
> service.
>
> Our terms of service are available on our website at
> http://www.livedrive.com/terms-of-use.aspx
>
> We will be refunding your Livedrive subscription fee in full. This
> refund will
> be processed immediately to the credit or debit card you used when you
> signed up
> for Livedrive.
>
> We are sorry that this action has become necessary.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Livedrive Internet Limited
> From: Livedrive <support@livedrivesupport.com>
> To: XXXXXX@XXXXX.com
> Sent: Fri, Jul 22, 2009 07:23 am
> Subject: Account Closure
Hi,
Unfortunately we no longer have your files on our servers. We are sorry
to break this bad news to you.
–
Regards,
The Livedrive Team.
I read the TOS section 2 item 3. Basically unless the actually go through all your files how do they know if what you upload is breaking the TOS?
Livedrive Ben
to me
show details Dec 22 (1 day ago)
- Show quoted text –
On Tue Dec 22 03:55:50 2009, XXXXX@XXXXX.com wrote:
> Why do I not have access to the support forums? Is this not a way to
> communicate to livedrive.com and their staff concerns or issues with
the
> service?
Hi,
Thank you for contacting Livedrive Support.
We are sorry to hear about the issue you’ve been experiencing with your
LiveDrive.
Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your query.
The forums are not currently available form your account. We apologise
for any inconvenience caused.
Any issues or questions can be sent to us directly.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.
–
Regards,
The Livedrive Team.
I signed up for this service with a free trial, and although the software was mediocre I thought having FTP access and a place to just keep everything backed up was a good idea, and worth the money. So, I bought the 100GB account. I filled it up and went to upgrade to the unlimited account. I filled in my credit card number and submitted it, but it said it failed. I tried again, perhaps I had mistyped? No go. Again? Nope. Another card? Nope. A second time on that card? Nope. I tried over a couple of days. Okay, emailing customer service…. …. …. A couple weeks later, I get the word that I should try it again. Then I get my credit card statements and they charged me a total of 8 times. It's been over a month since they told me they had reversed the charges, when in fact they haven't yet. I've filed complaints with my credit card companies but now I'm just waiting to get the money back. Luckily one was a credit card, only one was a debit and it's on an account I don't use that often.
I can understand code glitches, but taking weeks or months to respond to customer service inquiries starts to smell of fraud. Are they just making all these charges to cashflow their business? What's taking so long to get my money back?
You need to contact consumerdirect.gov.uk!! thats what we did and we secured a refund!! I know several people that got full refunds including myself… but.. this was dealing with the encryption problem.. if you see a problem with something else.. let them know!! They do help and listen!! I KNOW IT!!
My "free trial" account was from 12/10/09 – 1/10/2009 and you are suddenly without warning freezing my account? I have sent numerous emails about the service not working for uploads once I hit 800 gigs of data uploaded a week and a half ago but have yet to receive a reply. Before signing up I asked if I would be able to back up several TBs of data and sales@livedrive.com reported that it would not be an issue. The inconsistencies from sales, support, and the website along with a lack of professionalism are extraordinary to see from such a young company who one would believe would be doing much more to keep customers satisfied who took the gamble to sign up with a young unknown company. The reason I didn't enter my credit card information was because of numerous bad reviews and stories on websites from your current and previous users. Now having experienced this myself I can certainly say I will not be using your service for the following reasons:
1) Sales and support are on two different pages. Sales says I can upload "unlimited" amount of data but support locks my account when I reach 800 gigs.
2) The company promises a free month trial and suspends the account 5 days prior to the end of the free trial.
3) The website promises response from support within 1 day yet I have had numerous emails open for weeks that weren't responded, and the 1 email that did receive a response was 3 days after I sent it asking why I could not access the support forums.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 7:36 AM, Livedrive Support <support@livedrive.com> wrote:
Dear james jones
Your Livedrive free trial account has now been suspended for 24 hours. You are no longer able to access your account, and soon your account will be permanently and irreparably deleted. If you are happy for this to continue, there is no need to respond.
However it is not too late to reactivate your account – to do so, simply click on the following link and enter your billing details:
https://#@@(&.livedrive.com/alogin/D106737349E44A678C7528C29516FD17/updatebilling
You will be charged automatically and your account will be instantly reinstated.
Best regards,
Livedrive Team.
Hello,
funny than livedrive support follow this kind of subject ^^
I have reviewed LIVEDRIVE X days ago and i have quickly stopped !!! => EJECTED !
http://80.247.230.136/images/s_cks2.png show you why GHOST.EXE file is sent 6 times ???
support does not well understand english
i can not tell to my readers than livedrive is good sorry for them… in all cases, only 3 services
have accepted my test deal… keep forever a press account…
http://www.willemijns.com/backup.htm
ps: FYI i follow "vivilproject sucks" and "willemijns sucks" google alerts oh ! ^^
I am having an awful experience with Livedrive, both technically and their customer service. The Livedrive client is unstable, performs poorly and endlessly loops updating file lists etc.. I have 1 file in my briefcase, Livedrive client spent the best part of two days 'deleting' files in my briefcase, files that weren't even there. That scares you. I have had a team viewer session open at their request for the last two days, they haven't bothered using it. I had an urgent file to get to my brother, but Livedrive has been down for maintenance all day today, Shocking. Transfer speeds up and down are quite poor, I get max 250KB/s and have a 100Mb/s connection. After 4 months, I still have 1000's of files that have yet to be sent to my livedrive because the client simply hasn't processed them. Integrity checks take many hours, the Windows service crashes regularly and support haven't got a clue. Their forums have been taken down, the help system has no search function, there are various broken links on the pages (even one on today's maintenance page). I have a lot of experience in enterprise and high end consumer storage, they obviously have no tolerance built into their systems as far as storage replication goes, The service has no SLA's , no promises or guarantees, it's use it at your own risk.
If this is the face of cloud computing and storage, we are all in big short term, medium and long trouble.
LOST FILES!!!
I foolishly thought that my files were secure…that's what the blurb said!?!?
I've uploaded about 1.5tb only to find that many of the files "apparently" never uploaded at all…fatal mistake therefore to ask the client to only keep the bigger files 'online"…it wiped them off my local storage and they are not "online" after all…
Livedrives advice?
Run an integrity check….that seems to be their advice for ALL issues…their service is rubbish