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?

[clintwb]

My hope would be that more attention would bring about a better, more equitable solution than what they are doing.  

That being said, while it has gotten a lot of views, my guess is that those 600 comments are from the 20-30 of us who have been giving most of the updates and asking each other questions since this thing began.  And even if it was 600 users, I doubt that is enough to move the needle for dropbox. They have gone all-in on this new solution and, thus far shown that they have gone very "big picture" when dealing with their Business Advanced customers.  2 or 3 enterprise clients likely out-spend all of us anyway so they honestly just dont care. 

[clintwb]

@M3th0s
The general consensus from those of us who had communication with the Dropbox advanced “transition team” (outside of chat but on the phone or via email) was that they took our storage space from October 18th (or some date mid October, I forget at this moment) added 5TB to that and then made that our new quota moving forward. That new quota is then given to us for a period of one year from that random October date.

That being said, it seems like that was the solution only given to people who reached out and spoke with someone from their team.

In our case (and many others’) this meant that at the end of November when that change happened we lost overall space because from that time in October when they ran their calculation, we had added X number of terabytes of space since that point for example we had 154 TB in mid October and by the end of November we were at 168 TB, so they took that 154 and added 5 TB and that’s our new total until next October

* I’m not saying this is a good solution (in fact I’m as frustrated as anyone else) It was just our experience and I’m sharing it so that collectively we can all figure out what went on because it seems like Dropbox is handling things very inconsistently

Feel free to share your exact experiences here I know they’re a lot of people who have done so and it’s helped us give a more clear picture of what’s happening maybe if a media outlet picks up on this they will also be able to get more of the facts from us sharing our stories

[M3th0s]

Just to confirm, I'm on that boat of those who reached out and got it in writing from Dropbox after the requested call with them an agreement on the storage proposed. This was then confirmed on 2 subsequent occasions due to the murkyness of Dropbox Comms.
I was aware my storage would drop, but the drop was not in line with what was agreed on the call and subsequent support tickets, that's the problem I have.
I was forced to work whilst on holiday and liaise with several customers because all of a sudden I was over quota and could not use the promised storage.
This is not how a business should operate.

[clintwb]

@M3th0s  Thanks for sharing.  I think the more we all share our experiences, the better we will understand it. Ehh, this is the side that they are not realizing!  My doing this to their Business customers, and then not handling it constantly or with good communication it really put a lot of us in a bad spot.  We also had a long weekend of "over quota" where nothing would sync up and we had to scramble to find alternate ways to deliver projects to our clients, I even setup a new free DB account under a different email just to quickly get a 5GB folder up and sent as a transfer really quickly one Saturday because we were already a few days late on delivery. 

[visionhouse]

And enterprise customers should know the type of company Dropbox is becoming and what they should expect from a potential partner: obfuscation and duplicity.  How they handle any customer, even "less important" customers says something about their service mindset and culture. There are increasingly more options than Dropbox for an enterprise these days... if trust, stability and honesty are important to you then a long term partnership with Dropbox is a bad idea. ESPECIALLY for a large enterpriser user.

[Nil Einne]

Edit: Just to note I came to this thread partly from reading stuff elsewhere and read some of the responses at around current page 58 but didn't read the responses on 59 very well until now. I see some people were specifically promised they'd get more storage than they were eventually given. If support is going to promise something, they should deliver that or more, no matter what they said earlier. And at least if support made a mistake and overpromised they need to correct this in a fair away. To my mind, a bare minimum is inform you they made a mistake and give you ample time to deal with the new information. So for those people who were promised something more, I agree you're right to feel you've been shafted by Dropbox and apologise my initial response didn't acknowledge these people.

Original reply:

Noting I barely use Dropbox and am only aware of this because I considered it after Google stopped unlimited but decided it was too expensive and also too risky they'd just abandon unlimited too. So I don't really care either way.

But at least for those who did reach out, isn't what they're doing more or less inline with what they said in their blog post?

I just rechecked and they said

To make this transition easier, you’ll be able to continue utilizing your current storage amount at the time you’re notified, plus an additional 5TB credit of pooled storage for one year (up to 1,000TB total), at no additional charge to your existing plan.

<snipped>

We will begin gradually migrating existing customers to the new policy on November 1. You don't need to do anything today. We’ll notify all customers at least 30 days prior to their planned migration date.

So the fact that you had to reach out to get this is clearly a problem. But if you did and from what people are saying you were given to my read it's what they said they would back in August?

They never said they'd let you keep your current quota only how much you were using. Nor did they say they'll let you keep how much you were using when you migrated. Instead they said they'd let you keep how much you were using when you were notified. So if you were notified in mid October and they let you keep how much you were using then in mid October + 5TB it's what they said they'd do?

If you were notified late October and they went by some random date in mid October and it's less than yeah okay you have a reasonable complaint.  For that matter if you were notified in early October and for whatever reason you were using less in mid October. But it's not clear to me if this happened, instead people seem unhappy they reduced your quota or went by mid October (which I'm taking as notification date) rather than migration date, but I don't quite understand since it seems to be what they said they'd do.

Note I can understand complaints about Dropbox changing their original "as much as you need" policy especially given the interim period where they were still promising it but not delivering nor explaining very well. I can also understand complaints about it only being offered this when they reached out. And for those who Dropbox have told they're going to have their contracts terminated (for unspecified reasons but it seems to be because they're using too much).

P.S. Reading again, I guess people might interpret "current storage amount" as "current storage quota", but for me when I think about it carefully, how much you're currently storing/using seems to be the most reasonable interpretation. And at the very least it's a fair enough one that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying it's clearly wrong.

IIRC this is also how I read it back in August. The one thing I misunderstood is, again IIRC, I was thinking "notified" meant about the time we're posting this. But reading again it clearly says we'll notify you sometime in the future and 30 days before we migrate which starts 1 November.

[M3th0s]

Please read my reply above. Don't think anyone is misunderstanding anything.

After 1 call (the scheduled one) and 2 support tickets to confirm the outcome of said call, I was promised a said amount (which I also have in writing via support emails).

That amount was not the amount I ended up having in the end.

There is nothing here that is confusing or misleading. Dropbox promised X and delivered Y ignoring pretty much any subsequent support messages and straight up closing a support ticket (again, well done Ed!)

[C Michael]

I have had enough of dropbox's b.s.. They have been lying to us for the last few months. I went through all the proper procedures... the phone call, chat and emails. I have a complete paper trail of everything they are doing that is OPPOSITE of what they have been saying. The story has been changing. I have been addressing this since they rolled out emails with this new change a few months ago. I've posted here a few times in this thread.

I want to follow up with you all. I contacted support, yet again, and was told something completely different this time. I now have been told my contract will not renew at the end of december and I have 60 days until my files are marked for deletion. I contacted support and they promised to get to the bottom of it and email me back with a solution.  Low and behold, there was no solution.  Here's the response from "Natasha":

Thank you for chatting with Dropbox Support today! This email includes a ticket number for your reference.
I hope my email finds you well. 
 
I've investigated this for you as promised. Dropbox has decided not to renew your contract. I'm afraid I don't have specific details available to me. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
 
Usually this means either a) you didn’t respond to our Oct 27th email asking you to call us or b) we don't think we can service you effectively going forward
 
If there is anything else we could assist you with, we're only an email away
 
Best regards,
Natasha

Now, after being told (in writing) that my price wouldn't change and I'd have access to my files for at least a year, they now tell me tough **bleep**. I'm not sure what to do from here besides grab an attorney to see what documentation trumps all others. Whether that be their general TOS, or the documentation from the private emails directly addressed to me.  I'll post here if I get a resolution to share with you all.

[M3th0s]

My understanding on this is, after December, and when it hits your renewal date, the contract and payment with dropbox will not renew. So, as an example, I have an yearly contract which ends in May. So come May, no more payments will be taken from me and I have 60 days to move stuff out.

However this will probably hit hard on those paying monthly. 

Again, dropbox will change goalposts again, but that's how I understand it.

[C Michael]

It could be that they are moving the goalpost as you mention. Last month they were very clear to me in writing that it didn't matter how much longer the life of the contracts were, it would be a minimum of a year going forward for businesses that had large data sets, and 5 years for those with 35tb or less per user. So if an account had 3 users, they would have up to 105tb between the three of them for 5 years and those with more would have 1 year to move the data out of dropbox.

IDK, it would be a whole lot easier if they were up front with all of us from the start, instead of changing their narrative and involving the middleman to relay it. Even some of the reps admitted they were confused on what was happening.  Everything that was explained to me was contradicting each time I spoke to someone.