Business ProfileforWeRecoverData.com

I will preface this review saying that I did end up getting an almost-full refund from this company but only after notifying them that I was submitting a complaint with the Ontario Consumer Protection office under the grounds of 'misrepresentation.'

At a time of desperation and extreme stress following my hard drive being formatted (containing very important files) I went to werecoverdata.com. I went to their drop-off location, downtown on King St, and accepted the $95 fee for them to 'examine' my hard drive. That was my first mistake - handing over a non-refundable $95 to people with absolutely no concrete information as to overall price or initial evaluation (the woman there had no background in data recovery). I was told I would have to wait 48 working-hours to get a reply. Shortly after that I phoned their customer support line for a rough idea of quote so I knew what to expect. The man I spoke to couldn't give me anything concrete but due to the nature of my situation he said it would be the bottom end of a $250-$5000 range, the top end pertaining to physical damage such as water or fire. It was made clear that my situation would be straight forward. Therefore I was expecting to pay $500 maximum for the service as I was told the recovery would be standard. I got the quotes back (with no actual information about what they examined) and, unbeknownst to me, the quote came back in tiered options, the cheapest being about $1000 for a 3-4 week recovery, going up by about $200 for it to come back in 1-2 weeks and another $200 for a week ($1400 at this point).

I thoroughly looked through all my previous correspondence and their website for mention of this tiered quote system and there was nothing. Needless to say I was shocked and began coordinating with one of their managers/supervisors. *************************************************************** ************************************ She said she would talk to the engineer in charge of my case and, eventually, they agreed to do the recovery for $500. I accepted reluctantly because I had lost some trust for them but I was still grateful that I would get my files back at the price I expected. I believe that, even though they disguised the price drop as an act of benevolence, I think the original quote was really them trying their luck with a much larger and unfair price when $500 (maybe less) was actually completely fair, but that's just my opinion.

I coordinated with the engineer a couple of times, making it clear which files I wanted back specifically (I didn't care about the others). I also wrote explicitly on the form before paying the initial $95 fee which files I wanted recovered. I got the hard drive back (I was told I would get it back on the 18/8, I got it back on the 25/8) and over 60 of the requested files (about half) hadn't come back working (they were video files). The engineer that I was dealing with was cooperative and helpful overall however, still ************** in the sense that he didn't take the care/time to double check this and even tried to put the responsibility on me as I declined a screen share. I declined the screen share because he said it looked like the files were all there and fine.

I was of course very unhappy. After more back and forth the manager and engineer explained to me that this was out of their hands now and my case would have to be passed onto their 'research and development' department and I would receive a quote for the files to be repaired. After waiting even longer (it's now the 31st and I have been trying to contact them every working day up until this point) I get an email with this single sentence - 'Per our Director of Data Recovery Services, the R&D fee for video repair is $2,000 per video.' No explanation or anything else. At this point my communication with them ended and I started to enquire with other companies.

I bought two applications online for video file repair and one of them worked to some degree - it's called *********************, it cost $49.95 for a year licence. The thing was that the files were coming back as repaired but they were incomplete, not watchable in many instances. I began a dialogue with their amazing customer support team and after double checking with them multiple times (and their engineers) they said that what I got back from the program was as good as it's going to get because the files had been overwritten. Therefore, werecoverdata.com was going charge me $2000 per files (60 files x $2000 = $120,000 in total) for files I wouldn't have even got back in their entirety.

Feeling taken advantage of and extremely dissatisfied with werecoverdata.com's service, I started to investigate how to take action. I discovered the Ontario Consumer Protection Act and Office which is there to help people in this situation and I read that my case fell comfortably under the grounds of 'misrepresentation.' Before filing a complaint it states you should notify the company that you are filing a complaint against, which I did. Within 24 hours I received a call from the same manager that I was dealing with previously. She tried to explain that the reason the quote was so high was because each file would take two weeks to repair, I replied that I have been in communication with other data recovery specialists and I have a program which can repair the files to their best extent that costs $50 and does each one in less than 30 minutes. I didn't say this but companies like werecoverdata.com should be well aware of this kind of problem, what can be done and if there are programs which can fix the files, and I believe that they were. She didn't respond to that and went straight on to say they were going to refund my payment. I paid $500 + tax and I got about $450 back (I didn't bother chasing up the remaining amount).

I have tried to write this review as fairly and factually as possible, my recommendation if you are in this situation is:
- Stay calm, don't do anything with the hard drive yet. Find a company you can communicate with face to face such as ******** to get an initial evaluation. There are many companies out there.
If you want to try a program, try *********************. Their support services will also be able help you.
- I believe that this company had many opportunities, fully within the capabilities of their software to avoid this situation and they were taking advantage of me with the quotes/timeframes ********************************. If you read the reviews (some are listed under different Toronto locations), some say that they rejected the quote and found their files back on the hard drive anyway which just goes to show that they have the ability to see if it's possible to recover your data even before accepting the quote.
- I also believe that this company may be appropriate for organizations with big budgets (production companies, corporations etc.) but not for the regular person on their own like I was. I believe their business practices are advantageous and opportunist, big businesses can handle those costs but the little person can't.
- If you do choose this company and it goes awry, please contact the Ontario Consumer Protection office, the Better Business Bureau and leave reviews wherever you can, even if you get a refund, so if you or the next person has to go to court, there is a record of their *********** practices available.