Transfering ownership of a family plan?

[Ghostwriter]

Hi

We have a family plan and the family manager is no longer able to continue in that role for serious health reasons. What we need to do is transfer ownership so that one of the other members within the family plan can take over the role of manager and become responsible for future payments when they are due.

Is there a way to do this? Any assistance would be gratefully received.

[Walter]

Hey @Ghostwriter, thanks for posting on our Community and happy Monday!

I'm afraid that it is not possible to have more than one Family manager, or to transfer the manager role to another member of the Family at this time. 

If you want to change who is the manager for your Family, you will need to cancel the plan, then have the person who wishes to be the new Family manager purchase a new Family plan and re-invite the family members.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

[Ghostwriter]

Thanks for the reply. This seems really cumbersome. What happens when the current plan is cancelled? Will everyone lose their files? Will the shared family folder also disappear with all the important files in it?

Our family are dealing with a lot at the moment - this sounds like a lot of admin for something that ought to be seamless. Surely the current manager could just have the option somewhere in settings to initiate change of ownership? I can't think that this would be a hard thing to implement.

[Nancy]

Hi @Ghostwriter, I hope it’s OK to jump in. 

I’ve passed your feedback on this to our team, so that they can also see your comments. 

Besides that, can I suggest perhaps that you update the linked email address of the Family manager’s account to yours instead?

This way, you should be able to log in to their Dropbox account, without changing something else.

[Ghostwriter]

Thanks for passing on my feedback. Your suggestion is not I think, sadly, the solution we need. As I understand it, that would give me access to some elements of running the family account, but not allow me to make the payment when it next comes to renewing the account?

Without going into the full details of our situation, I am sure there must have been or will be occasions when people need to change the designated family member at short or very sudden notice. In such often delicate situations, an easy method of transferring ownership (while ensuring appropriate security checks) ought to be available. Fully closing an account and making up to 6 different people have to sort out whatever files they have stored, download them, transfer them and then start all over again rebuilding everything on a fresh family account would entail a lot of work - even at the best of times.

I see no logical or practical reason why transferring ownership within a family group would not be easy to implement from Dropbox's end of operations. Also it seems a weird way to operate from a commercial stand point as at present once people find they have to migrate from a system they have been happily using for some years, they might as well look at what other cloud storage companies have to offer, since they are essentially having to start again from scratch.

I offer these thoughts constructively as a long term Dropbox users - in the hope that a solution can be found, not just for the situation I and my family are currently in, but for other people who may confront something similar in the future.

[GKj]

Having the same situation as did @Ghostwriter back in February, I'm wondering, have Dropbox been able to advance the matter or even considering a solution?

[Ghostwriter]

Hi GKj, I'm sorry to hear you are going through this. I don't think there have been any changes to the way Dropbox operate, but hopefully this will remind them that this is likely to become an issue that they need to have a better and more helpful policy around.

The only positive in our situation was that the family account had recently been renewed so there was some breathing space to try and deal with the issue at a later date.