[jamesbritt]

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 longer sync any files. When I saw this I assumed I was going to get the refund.

Days passed. I asked about the refund. The support email included disturbingly fawning about Ms. Rice and how amazing she was, and insisted that the Dropbox ToS made it flat-out impossible for them to issue any refunds. My account was changed back to allow the 100 GB of storage and Dropbox acted like it never botched my request.

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. Hiding behind their own ToS just shows how deaf they are to the matter. They basically don't give a fuck, and they don't have to because they have enough people who are more concerned with convenience than principles as amply shown on HN.

There are very good alternatives to Dropbox. Both SpiderOak and ownCloud work great on Windows, OSX, and Linux. You can get managed ownCloud hosting if you don't want to set up your own: https://owner.io.

It's puzzling that anyone would trust them with their data given their behavior.

[encoderer]

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 asked them to ensure I would not be auto rebilled, and that was that. Why exactly are they morally corrupt for this?

[sheetjs]

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

[jamesbritt]

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.

[jljljl]

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.

[stronglikedan]

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.

[bharath28]

But if they don't have a refund policy(which i understand), why would they botch it up/take away paid features anyway? Makes no sense.

[stronglikedan]

It was neglect for sure, but I think it stemmed from poor communication and not malice. He requested that they cancel his premium service and refund him for the remaining duration. They cancelled the premium service, but neglected to tell him that he wouldn't get a refund. Also, this was during a time when a lot of people were trying to cancel, so I'm sure the customer service team was overloaded with this type of request.

[jljljl]

Ahh I missed that point, my bad.

[jamesbritt]

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.

[dabernathy89]

> 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.

[jamesbritt]

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.

[squeaky-clean]

>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.

The customer service representative you spoke to did not make those rules up. Unless you were speaking to the CEO of Dropbox personally, then yes, there is nothing that person could do. There may not even be a function of their support system that allows refunds. How do you know how simple it is for a CSR to offer you a refund?

[jamesbritt]

How do you know how simple it is for a CSR to offer you a refund?

I don't. So I asked the CSR to please pass my request on to someone higher up.

The response?

Nothing.

Zilch.

Not even the decency to tell me, "No."

I gather then that once Dropbox decides you're not a potential revenue source they can't be bother with even basic consideration.

[rwallace]

So you don't approve of Condoleezza Rice backing the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Okay, I agree with you that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong thing to do.

I don't approve of you attacking Dropbox, and Ms. Rice in her capacity as a Dropbox employee, for actions that have nothing to do with the company.

Would you like it if I wrote to your employer demanding you be fired because of your actions here? No? You would say, wouldn't you, that your posts on HN have nothing to do with your employer and regardless of what I think of your posts, it would be a dick move on my part to drag your employer into it?

Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

[fit2rule]

How well do you know "Ms. Rice"? Personally? Professionally? Politically? Psychologically?

Ms. Rice, and her associates, were responsible for committing acts of open war on another country and in so doing violated - criminally - much international as well as national law. Charges at the ICC mean something. Such individuals, no matter what, should not be allowed more access to the masses until they have answered for their crimes.

The fact that this is of no consequence to someone who 'publically defends Ms. Rice' may not surprise me. She must answer to crimes against humanity, sir! This is why she should not be associated with the Western worlds growing fascination for documenting itself ..

[m_myers]

> they have enough people who are more concerned with convenience than principles as amply shown on HN.

Perhaps you could instead consider that not everyone shares your beliefs or principles.

[runjake]

From https://www.dropbox.com/terms

  No Refunds. You may cancel your Dropbox Paid Account 
  at any time but you won't be issued a refund.

[rsync]

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 ...

[Someone1234]

rsync.net aren't really competing with DropBox so I don't see the relevance.

DropBox has multi-platform support on all major mobile and desktop platforms. They also have a GUI application that will "just work" for syncing your files off site.

rsync.net is really UNIX only since the offering doesn't work particularly well when not combined with popular Linux/UNIX tools (e.g. rsync). On Windows you're left using FTP and doing the sync-ing yourself somehow and there is no mobile presence at all.

The software is 1/2 of DropBox's (and Google Drive's) value. rsync.net is certainly inexpensive but not really competing for the same business or customers.

[rsync]

Remember that "unix only" means all macs. That's significant and interesting (or at least, we think it is).

You are correct that there is no mobile presence at all ... except for every single android phone.

There is a "must be this tall to ride" bar at rsync.net and that's working very well for us and our customers.

[Someone1234]

I agree and disagree on Macs.

With Macs there are predominantly two "types" of users. Those who use a Mac because they want a UNIX machine that works well as a desktop/has a widely supported GUI, and then there are those who use Macs because they find them easier than Windows (due to the better consistency and less clutter).

I think rsync on OS X will widely appeal to this first group, but not appeal at all to the second group. As far as those people are concerned if it isn't in the store then it doesn't exist, and if it doesn't have a GUI it definitely doesn't exist.

As to Android you guys don't, as far as I know, offer an app? Maybe my information is out-of-date on that one.

I completely respect that you guys want to appeal to a certain demographic and there is something to be said for that. I was just pointing out above that rsync.net is niche and isn't "really" competing 1:1 with DropBox, Google Drive, or to a lesser extent One Drive.

Your prices remain quite impressive and I'm sure you do what you do very well.

[panarky]

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.

[Multics]

From Wikipedia[1].

'In the summer of 2014, Sam Altman became president of Y Combinator. Y Combinator also announced a Board of Overseers: Brian Chesky, cofounder of AirBnB, Adora Cheung, cofounder of HomeJoy, Patrick Collison, cofounder of Stripe, Drew Houston, founder of DropBox, Jessica Livingston, David Rusenko, Emmett Shear, and Sam Altman, cofounder of Loopt.'

Y Combinator, and by extension HN, is in cahoots with the people at Dropbox.

if investment > ethics: keep story on front page

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator_%28company%29

[oskarth]

This isn't a game of three generations of punishment. The problem is with Rice and her role at Dropbox, not everyone connected to Dropbox.

[Multics]

I would say Drew Houston, and investors in Dropbox are more specific than 'everyone connected to Dropbox'.