UPC recorder box replaced- all recorded shows lost

dinneenp

Hi,
Our UPC recorder box stopped working, guy came out and replaced it/rebooted it. We lost all our recordings- over 60 hours of films, docs, cartoons for our daughter etc.

They didn't mention this would happen, I phoned up today and they said "yes, everything would be gone". I asked do they give any compensation etc but they said no.

Should I expect some, seeing as it wasn't my fault?

I'm thinking of changing to Sky+ anyway, friends say it's more user friendly.
Only + for UPC is 80 hours of recording vs 40 and Setanta channel (but isn't not great these days anyway).

cheers,
Pa

Ash.J.Williams

There's people dying in Pakistan

themacdaddy

No, you definitely should not expect compensation.

The programmes are stored on the hard drive of the box, so when they replace the box the programmes are gone.

Sorry but you may just record new ones.

Sky+ is better in my opinion but the same thing would happen if you had programmes recoreded on a sky box and it was replaced!

TouchingVirus

Ask UPC if you could have your old box back and swap the hard drive?

dinneenp

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

There's people dying in Pakistan

Yes, there are people dying in Pakistan, there are also people dying in
Afghanistan
Akrotiri
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antarctica
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Ashmore and Cartier Islands
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas, The
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bassas da India
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhuta
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
British Indian Ocean Territory
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
all the way up to and including
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tromelin Island
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands
Wake Island
Wallis and Futuna
West Bank
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe


So if someone short changes you, shouldn't you bother asking for the correct money, if camera shop deleted your pictures shouldn't you be bothered, if UPC were at fault for deleting my recordings I shouldn't be bothered?

djimi

Compensation for what? Its a hard drive and a fact of life is hard drives fail and contents get lost. Its poxy but the reality is you cant back up a UPC box (unless you want to playback content and record to recordable DVD) so when it goes wrong you lose anything. Chances are the engineer didnt reset the box for the fun of it, and even if he had told you about it you still would have lost the content; there is no way to save it or recover it if the box needs to be reset.

You can ring up UPC and if you whinge enough and make enough noises about moving to Sky they may offer you something as a sweetner to keep you on board (I know Sky would, but I cant speak for UPC on that), but they are not obliged to give you compensation for lost recordings if the box fails, so I wouldnt be expecting it.

djimi

dinneenp wrote: »

So if someone short changes you, shouldn't you bother asking for the correct money, if camera shop deleted your pictures shouldn't you be bothered, if UPC were at fault for deleting my recordings I shouldn't be bothered?

Like I said, UPC more than likely didnt delete the recordings for the fun of it. You said the box stopped working; for all we know they hard drive could have given up the ghost, and that being the case the recordings are gone no matter who does what to the box. Its not necessarily UPCs fault.

dinneenp

It's not a big deal but just annoyed me.
They provided me with the box so in my eyes it's their fault. No debate there I think.
You pay extra for having the ability to record programmes and watch them whenever you want.
I lost my programmes but have being paying extra for this service.
It's like cloud computing and if the server went down and you lost your material/data.
I thought they could offer a month's free UPC or similar.

Ash.J.Williams

dinneenp wrote: »

Yes, there are people dying in Pakistan, there are also people dying in
Afghanistan
Akrotiri
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antarctica
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Ashmore and Cartier Islands
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas, The
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bassas da India
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhuta
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
British Indian Ocean Territory
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
all the way up to and including
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tromelin Island
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands
Wake Island
Wallis and Futuna
West Bank
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe


So if someone short changes you, shouldn't you bother asking for the correct money, if camera shop deleted your pictures shouldn't you be bothered, if UPC were at fault for deleting my recordings I shouldn't be bothered?

THey didn't delete anything and you were not short changed....if they were replacing your pc you would ask about transferring your data? I sacrificed all my recording recently do get a HD box, i thought about asking for the harddrive...then i thought....f** it....now it's full of wonderful new recordings...life is too short to be worrying about tv

watty

dinneenp wrote: »

I
I lost my programmes but have being paying extra for this service.
It's like cloud computing and if the server went down and you lost your material/data.

Yes. Unless there is a specific contract, you lose all your data. Most so called "Cloud computing" you need to make your own backups unless you are paying very big money for replication and backup (two difference services).

djimi

dinneenp wrote: »

It's not a big deal but just annoyed me.
They provided me with the box so in my eyes it's their fault. No debate there I think.
You pay extra for having the ability to record programmes and watch them whenever you want.
I lost my programmes but have being paying extra for this service.
It's like cloud computing and if the server went down and you lost your material/data.
I thought they could offer a month's free UPC or similar.

Its not their fault tho if the hardware fails; hardware fails, its a fact of life. They will replace the faulty hardware, thats the only obligation they have to you. I agree its incredibly annoying, but nowhere does it say that the hardware is 100% bulletproof and they guarantee you will always have access to your recorded programs.

Its not really like cloud computing either; generally with cloud computing if their hardware goes down they have measures in place to ensure that data is not lost. Thats what you pay for as part of the service. There is no such system in place with UPC, nor could there be unless they give you the option to be able to backup to an external hard drive or something, which from what I can tell opens up a whole different can of worms regarding copyright etc.

Solair

dinneenp wrote: »

I'm thinking of changing to Sky+ anyway, friends say it's more user friendly.
Only + for UPC is 80 hours of recording vs 40 and Setanta channel (but isn't not great these days anyway).

Sky will do EXACTLY the same thing to you if there's a problem with the box i.e. if you need a replacement box, the contents of the hardrive are gone. Also, if you unsubscribe from a particular channel e.g. Sky movies, any recorded movies will be blocked on the hardrive.

Also, in my experience of Sky, they can really shaft you if there's a hardware fault. With UPC, they own the box and are responsible for maintaining it if it goes wrong. With Sky, they just subsidise the box and you own it. Our Sky+ HD box broke down and Sky won't replace it as it's over a year old. They also won't subsidise a new one so the replacement cost is several hundred Euro!

watty

And anyone that Believes that Cloud storage is Secure and provides backups automatically without a big fat premium charge and procedures believes in Tooth Fairy. Even then no "transparency" compared to procedure of your own backups.

Anything important on Gmail or Googel docs. do your own backup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidekick_data_loss_2009

The "cloud" turned stormy for Microsoft Corp. this weekend, after a technical glitch apparently wiped out personal data for users of the T-Mobile Sidekick smartphone

The Sidekick stored everything "in the cloud" not locally, at least only maybe RAM. Flat battery + MS error = no data.

Bodan

This happened to me a few weeks ago as well. My box broke down and I needed a replacement one. So i took out the hard drive with all my recordings, in an attempt to save them. Most of the stuff on it was easily replaced, but Ireland winning the grand slam and a few other shows based around it would be unreplaceable.

I am not going to try and connect it up to my new box until i get a DVD recorder.