Complaint Review: Fields Data Recovery

I contacted them about recovering some personal data (wedding pictures) from an older MacBook Pro with a glass hard drive. I told them the data was not worth much more than $300 to me. They said they could do it but I needed to ship them my computer. They sent me a shipping label and I purchased a specially designed box for shipping a laptop and sent it to them.

A week went by and I was contacted with a quote of $960. I told them again the data was only worth $300 to me and to please ship my computer back in the box I purchased for $29. They told me I needed to pay $60 for shipping so I gave them my credit card number. It was right around this time that dozens of my accounts started getting hacked. Is was as if they sold my data to hackers.

After several weeks of repeated phone calls and emails, I received my computer back. They basically threw it into an Express Pad Pak and then put that into a small UPS Express Box. When I opened the box I discovered the screen on the computer was shattered. When I tried to turn the computer on it just flashed an icon. I took it to a local computer repair shop and they informed me that not only was the screen shattered but the screen hinge was broken and several keys did not work. What even stranger was that the computer did not have a hard drive inside it.

I then contacted them about the missing hard drive, my shipping box and the broken computer. They did after several days find my hard drive and they shipped it to me. As far as replacing the broken computer they first kept referring me to different people. I was finally given to a person in customer service named Anna. She took all my information and was very nice about everything. She told me that they had filled a claim with UPS. I thought this was strange because it did not appear to be a shipping issue as much as a packaging issue but they insisted on blaming UPS.

Several more weeks went by and I decided to call and follow up. This is when the lies began. Anna told me that a claim had been filled and UPS agreed to pay the replacement amount of $2000. A week went by and I called again to follow up. I was put in contact with Todd Taylor who told me Anna no longer worked there. I told him what she told me. I then called UPS to find out what had been done. They told me that no claim had been filled. So everything concerning my computer to this point had been a lie.

I then filed my own claim with UPS. I took 7 pictures of the crappy packaging they used and sent it all to UPS. They rejected the claim because of how it was shipped. The last email I received was from Ruth Holt. her are her words;

Good evening 

If you continue to call myself childish names I will not be prepared to assist you any further. 

I have contacted our rep at ups and awaiting a status update to provide yourself as evidence of the Claim so that you can see we did raise a claim on your behalf. 

Please do not insult me again otherwise this will be my final communication with yourself I will not tolerate your abusive and accusatory emails. 

We do not tolerate clients abusing staff. 

my reply;

Apparently, you have zero policy concerning abusing customers because UPS is not going to pay this claim because of how you packaged the shipment. I know this because I filed a claim after your staff repeated lied about filling a claim like you are doing now. This is not an insult simply the truth. Call this number 1 800 742-5877 and give them this tracking number 1Z V5E 961 03 4844 7251. UPS did nothing wrong! The only thing I need to hear from you is when my check will arrive.  I am also going to share with UPS how you blame them for your incompetence.  If you don’t like being called a liar stop lying. No claim was ever filled by Fields Data Recovery! You don’t have a rep at UPS! All you’re doing is stalling for time. Court documents are in transit now!

As you can see they are still trying to blame UPS for this issue. Is this the kind of company you want to trust with your data? I'm just glad this computer did not have very much up to date data.