Gillware, Inc.

Gillware My 2 TB external hard quit due to the USB being accedintly moved. Can't access the drive which has hundreds of family history, photos and documents. Nice, prompt help with free shipping. Shipping label was UPS ground package weighed 1 lb. So the shipping cost is around $6. They wrote it would be $2000 to get the information from the drive. I explained that's way out of my budget. So they can ship the drive back to me $34.09 for UPS ground. If I was a business I could afford their fees and write it off as a business expense.

My phone quit working and presented a bright yellow screen. I tried every remedy I could find on the web and also took the phone to some local fix-it shops. No one could access the phone, so I assumed my data (notes, photos, contacts) were gone. I thought I was backing up to the Samsung cloud, but that turned out not to be the case.
I found Gillware on the web and called them about my phone. I had to send it to them (their expense) for analysis. Some time later I got a call from them asking some general questions about my phone. They told me they would begin the analysis and let me know. I heard back that they had been successful and that they would charge my card for the repairs and the WD hard drive to put the data on to return to me.
I got the drive and could access it and found my data to be intact. Almost all of my photos, all of my notes and contacts were recovered.
I am very satisfied with the end result and would definitely use them again and recommend their services. I think their attention to administrative detail could use some improving. The WD drive was to be password protected when I received it; it wasn't. Their correspondence was a bit lacking (not intolerable) and could improve.
The results were well worth the price.

Today's Date: 7/29/15
On 6/22/15, I accepted a statement of work regarding cell phone data recovery which quoted "an estimated 85% chance of a successful recovery," which was defined as "at least 90% of the customer's files are recovered." The duration of work was anticipated at "5-8 days." I was forewarned that the recovery work could permanently damage the phone leaving it useless. Because of the 85% chance of recovery, I decided to risk the potential loss of my cell phone.
The recovery results were 0%.
The duration of work was 32 days.
My $600 cell phone was damaged and rendered useless.
To add insult to injury, I was forced repeatedly to contact the company for the status of the recovery throughout the four weeks. The responses were often technical requiring me to follow-up for clarification. When I finally learned the results, I was told I would have to wait another week to pick up my damaged phone. When I complained about the poor communication, I was told my complaint was forwarded to a manager who has yet to respond.
I did not pay a dime but this experience cost me a $600 cell phone, a $100 replacement phone and valuable time spent waiting and hoping only to come up empty-handed and deflated by an experience that redefined "poor customer service."

Let me begin by stating that Gillware Data Recovery was NOT able to recover my data. I know that not all corrupted data can be brought back, but we were just very disappointed in both their inability as well as the service we received (as you will see why).
To start, I had a memory card from a camera that had some corrupted pictures on it. Not all, but around 40% of the files for some reason were corrupted data. When I dropped off the card at their office (I am local) they were optimistic and said they will have their engineer who handles these types of memory cards look at it. Wonderful! At that time they quoted anywhere from $250 to $500. Fine, these were pictures from a vacation of a lifetime. Two days later I received an email stating and showing that 100% of the data was recovered. OMG! How great!! They asked for payment which was $400 plus a fee to put the data on 2 DVDs. By the way, they charged me $7.99 per DVD…Yikes!
Here is where everything went bad. Two days after I paid I get a phone call stating that actually NONE of the data was recovered and they need to do more work on the recovery. You heard right, NONE!! So, they billed me $400 and they hadn’t really even done anything. This is where I had to question everything.
What was their billing practice? If I paid $400 what is that they did? Did they download something off of my memory card and simply say “OK, $400 please!”. Don’t they know that I already did this at home!!
Who is working on the data recovery? I mean how incompetent are the individuals working on my recovery? It seems they are doing the same thing that I did but wanting HUNDREDS of dollars for it.
Am I going to get billed for more money since they need to actually do work on my data recovery? They have me in a bind in that I want the data and have already shown that I was willing to pay. Oh Boy!!
In the end, as I said above, they were not successful. It is worth noting that they did refund me my money 100%, but again everything seemed to be mishandled and nothing was really explained to me. Not the billing, not the actual reason they told me everything was recovered, nothing.
My word of warning is simply that these guys seem like they bill however they feel that day. They didn’t seem to do any work on my recovery and wanted $400. Hmmmm

Process worked exactly as advertised. Not cheap per se, but certainly worth it to get all my data back. Back ups fail too, and if it ever happens to me again, then I'm using Gillware again.

Review: Company began robocalling my DO NOT CALL listed Cell phone with an automated message to hawk their services without any prior consentDesired Settlement: IMMEDIATE removal of ALL my contact information from their telemarketing scam lists and a CEASE AND DESIST of ALL further communication, annoyance and harassment

Business

Response:

We were simply calling this gentleman because he is the contact for "[redacted]", a company that provides computer services. The phone number is a public business number listed on this website [redacted] We called him to be a potential partner for data recovery. We'll remove him from our system. We're not trying to scam anyone or telemarket... we were just trying to call him to see if he would like to partner with us along with thousands of other computer repair businesses but I guess he's not interested based on his complaint.

Thanks,

Consumer

Response: