No additional space on Business Advanced

[ggtello]

Dear community,

I'm here to advice that the support have been denying us additional space for two weeks, first telling us that there was a momentary problem, then that we had made a request before the 7 days, then again (after waiting 7 days) that there is a problem which however is not written by Nowhere.

We're really worried about that because they don't give us any timelines and the fact that the problem doesn't exist on the dropbox status page and that nobody else talks about it seems a bit suspicious.

I don't like writing these posts but we are really worried don't you think? Are any of you having similar problems? do they only have it with us?

[pete_]

latest info from dropbox support regarding the new space packs: Space packs will be available from tomorrow.

no hints or details on the planned price points so far.

[melodyanne]

My team has 39TB stored and our files stopped syncing yesterday. Talked with a rep this morning and he said they are only allowing increases of 1TB/month now. I replied "so I pay for unlimited, but I'm not getting unlimited?" He said if I was unhappy I could cancel my service, and he repeated it a number of times. He also said they are encouraging their customers to be more selective in what we are storing?? We have video and media files that simply take up a lot of space - our entire reason for needing an unlimited storage solution.

Not a good sign when a business is encouraging its customers to cancel service. And with all the troubles it's given with offline files not syncing with Adobe products... what is going on with Dropbox?? Used to love the service.

[gmo81]

We have just been hit with the same problem.

We were at over 90% utilisation of approximately 200TB.

We have in the past had storage added in 20, 30 and 50TB increments (from memory) and it has never been a problem. I never hit a hard limit in my previous experience on adding storage. The team was always super cool and helpful.

We signed up to the ‘advanced plan’ years ago for ‘as much storage as you need’, and although I found it disappointing I need to continue to ask permission to get access to that storage, it wasn’t a big deal and I understand why they do that.

At this stage, I need to upload about 30TB in the near term, and expect to upload as much as 100TB by end of year. So I asked for 100TB. I asked for what I reasonably expect to use from my ‘as much storage as you need’ plan.

All of a sudden, I got the ‘we are giving you 1TB’ and ‘see our policy’ which states the request needs to be reasonable.

Well, Dropbox have raised their prices, we’ve increased our team numbers on this plan, and I pay for ‘as much as I need’. I *need* about 100TB to cover us for the next six months of uploads. I’ve currently got a 200TB storage space at ~90% utilisation following the ‘1TB’ they ‘gave us’ (we pay for it) this morning.

You can’t sell ‘as much storage as you need’ and then silently introduce policies to support staff and tell them they can no longer honour the advertised offering and expect us to accept that. 

This is the kind of thing that loses customers. I get that we use what many will consider a lot of space, but that’s why we pay for a lot of space (‘as much as you need’), because we … need it.

I hope the Dropbox team re-think this new policy. At first I thought it may have been a mistake until I saw this post. It appears it is not a mistake at all. Very disappointing, and if not resolved we will need to switch to another provider using object storage, and/or do internal site-to-site replication, which is viable, but very, very disappointing. If Dropbox is no longer going to honour their advertised products to long term customers, when everything used to be totally cool, I’ll be sure to be letting others I’ve referred to dropbox know about this, and will be certainly looking to jump ship for our storage needs.

[gmo81]

I just got the same response… 1TB a month - I found my previous request, I think I asked for 50TB… but they gave us 80TB in August 2022. We are about to run out of that space, and this 1TB a month may work for some, but it does not work for us, and it is not what we have been paying for.

I understand Dropbox may have hit some operational limitations which mean they need to try and ‘reign it in’, but if that is the case you’re better off working with your customers (in my opinion), being really clear about the issue, and what steps you’re going to be taking to keep our business… 

We were just offered a cancellation with a full refund, but no path forward so far. This is not a reasonable or professional approach. Simply saying ‘the request needs to be reasonable’ (but silently, translating this to 1TB a month is reasonable, but nothing else is reasonable, with no context including that we’re at 90% of 200TB) is not a suitable solution, and is not a reasonable response.

[Dominus]

I don't see how 1 TB/Month can work for anyone.  It's cheaper to just buy local storage at this point.  This truly sounds like a sad sad joke if this is true.  Hopefully it's just temporary, but with the influx of new users I have my doubts now that it will ever be anything worth paying for now here.  Guess it is time to find someone new as others have said.  Really really disappointed in this.

[danblaze]

Love your response, it's a respectable, problem-solving attitude.

Say something that some people don't like to hear. I hold Google business plans from way back and store some of the information we need for our company, not a bad amount of data.

After Google changed their policy, I became one of the waves in the migration to Dropbox wave.

I'm not ashamed of it because I went through the whole process in a reasonable manner, made my requirements known to my support team, requested space, and expected a good data transfer result.

Now Dropbox is tight on storage space, which I believe is an inevitable consequence of the influx of users after one of the competitors announced a change in policy.

I understand this, I just hope that this can be handled in a reasonable manner - for example, how long will it take for Dropbox to perform an unanticipated expansion, and is there a reasonable timeline and node for this?

Or, if Dropbox feels that the unlimited space policy should be changed - that there's a fee to get more or whatever - that should be communicated to users in a more clear and unambiguous manner.

Rather than continually cutting back on the amount available per request, this is not a reasonable and predictable solution for users.

Finally, I have to seriously refute what "Tomato", the user, said. This is just spreading a worthless fear and trying to treat all users with unlimited space packages as a kind of storage locusts, which is a meaningless assumption and insulting, and I think it is completely wrong.

[Rootax]

Well, he's not wrong about the massive amount of non duplicated data coming in with the google drive recent changes.

But yeah, the way he talk about it and stuff are all wrong...

[danblaze]

I believe the change in Google's policy will be a major decision point behind this move by Dropbox.

But again, that's no reason for it to accuse everyone of being storage locusts. Certain people who need a lot of space are PLEX users, for example.

When Google has a policy change, all customers with large capacity needs will look for other options, and I don't think that's something to be ashamed of, something that shouldn't be said.

My alternatives are also iDrive E2 and they also have very cheap S3 storage plans. The problem is that Dropbox offers a complete experience that cannot be replaced by S3 storage.

One merchant doesn't go for something and another merchant gets extra customers because they do something. I don't see where there is a problem with that.

[jmbn]

Dropbox is a cloud storage company. The core of their business is storing files for people/companies.
When someone subscribes to a cloud storage service they expect reliability and privacy.

It really shouldn't matter if one stores SQL databases, massive DNG files from their holidays or their favourite movies.
As long as Dropbox users aren't sharing files they shouldn't share (i.e: files with copyright) it shouldn't matter if user A stores media type X, Y or Z.

I'm not too mad about them making only small storage increases as long as it's a temporary measure, but I understand that this could be a big issue for those whose business heavily rely on Dropbox backups.

Dropbox advertise that you can get as much storage as you need and for weeks that hasn't been the case and we don't know when things will go back to normal. This type of practice doesn't look good on them really.

[Rootax]

I believe Dropbox and Box will "digeste" the load in the coming months.

I believe they will remove the "as much storage as you need" / unlimited wording, but we'll be back with good increases from support when needed and if the account is not expending non stop... If so, they can have a special plan for >PB users or something ? Idk... Don't forget, they have an increase of cash flow too...