Just to warn everybody not to pay for registration key for the Seagate Data Recovery software.

They charge the credit card. Then they inform you that the payment didn't get through and ask to reorder the software on the website promising do delete your previous order and NOT to charge you card once again...

...then guess what...

Yes, you're perfectly right:

1. they charge the card for the second time;
2. they form a second order without ddeleting the previous one;
3. they inform you that the new payment has failed as well;
4. they do not accept e-mails;
5. they do not answer their customer feedback messages sent from their website through a feedback/enquiry form.
6. they do nothing to solve the problem and do not refund the money.
Etc., etc.

Do not buy their hardware as well. It corrupted my data after half a year of a very sporadic usage with an extreme care since the data was very important. The HDD is a real trash, the software is their way to rip you off and they provide no customer support.

I consulted the websites of HDD repairers and Seagate HDDs are on top of those which need repair among all brands.

Indeed. . . Seagate is horrible company, by any standard and measure. In general, Seagate is like microcosm of US society, today.

From market/accounting fraud, to the end users fraud: HD drives. I have nothing but horrible experience with them. Seagate's HDD won't see my PC ever, and anything made by Seagate for that matter. Yet, they are everywhere and their marketing is formidable and visible in almost every hardware forum. In couple of the forums I tried to publish my story -about their "quality of product and customer support", and it didn't see the light of the day.

Owners of those site are scared and/or brought, and do not want to publish real life stories. Unfortunately, the market of independent HDD manufacturers is smaller and smaller. Seagate have brought Samsung's HDD business few months back. My guess is that "their quality control and customer support" policy will be adopted by Samsung, too. That's is how a fraudulent business practices have won over market (where supposedly winer is always the one with better products!?), and "quality of control" is just meaningless term.

In another word financialization and mergers (monopolization) of various IT companies, vast majority of them US owned, bringing to the market worst and worst products.

Thank you for the support.
I also published my complaint on their website forum though I certainly do not expect much from this move... actually nothing at all.

To add a bit, the serial No on the back of the HDD and the serial No which was identified by the Seagate troubleshooting software turned to be absolutely different.

I'm thinking over buying some IBM or Fujitsu and via some reliable international online shop which cares about its reputation... may be Amazon... though I do not believe there are any reliable manufacturers or shops... it's just awful how we depend on all these... this trash.

As much as I would like not to generalize, software made by manufacturers are not very good. Third party tools are much better IMO.

Concerning the HHDs, no brand is perfect. Drives will fail sooner or later and for all kinds of reasons, not just because they are poorly manufactured.

Backup is king.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Everybody knows that backup is a must-do. But I'd love to learn how many people do it indeed, and how many - regularly...

Yes, first of all I used ZAR and it recognized all but most of the photos. Documents were then somewhat safe and I decided to try other tools to get rest of the data. And there al the problems began. Yes, I was too relaxed. Didn't have all this problems with online purchases for ages and just relaxed my vigilance.

By the way they answered with excuses but havn't yet done anything.

Exactly my point. Not a lot of people do backup, therefore not realizing it is a must do. Instead, people rely on the durability of the hdd.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

The fraud and fraudulent practice of the Seagate is the topic of this post. Not backing up of data, I thought that is clear from the very first post. It seems to me for some people becomes "normal" if corporation steal you money, or, if Government steal you retirement funds.

If I for example, buy HDD in retail outlet (premium price) and that HDD fail, I expect to get new one - not "refurbished" one. And that one - "refurbished"... fail too. All this happens in course of couple months. So, what end users supposed to do, and what's next is the chain of corporate fraud?

If Seagate "pump up" its balance sheet, in order to pump up its stock price what is it? Normally it is called: crime.

Backing up of data is matter of choice, quality of HDDs it is not. If I do not back up that's my bad. HD drive supposed to last reasonable amount of time.

"I also published my complaint on their website forum though I certainly do not expect much from this move... actually nothing at all."

Neither did I. However, it is stunning level of totalitarianism and control that corporations/gov. exerts over end users/population.

Hi Pups,

We a sorry that your experience with purchasing Seagate File Recovery software didn't do as smooth as it should be.
I found that the support team did reply to you today and it seems that the issue was clarified.
Please see below our comments an all points you brought up in your original post:

1. they charge the card for the second time;
- Both times there were no real charges from Seagate. Those transactions are in pending stage and should be released by credit card company in a day or two.
This is the usual practice with credit cards payments when you have funds, but vendor (Seagate in this case) didn't process the full payment due to the failed security check.

2. they form a second order without ddeleting the previous one;
- You can not really delete a credit card transaction. The only thing you could do is to process a refund, but in this case we didn't charge anything yet, so there's nothing to refund either.
Again - those pending transaction will be released by your bank in a day or two, we have no control over it now.

3. they inform you that the new payment has failed as well;
- Both payment have failed because of "Geolocation inconsistencies in order" as was reported by our security system.
I can't tell you what fields were exactly the source of this error, but if you used the correct billing address, then most likely you need to use another c/c.
Our goal is to ensure c/c payment safety and to protect you from the potential fraud.

4. they do not accept e-mails;
Our DIY software support only available on business days and we replied to you on Monday.
Unfortunately you tried to purchase the software on Saturday.

5. they do not answer their customer feedback messages sent from their website through a feedback/enquiry form.
The same as #5

6. they do nothing to solve the problem and do not refund the money.
We are sorry you felt it this way.
I just can repeat that we didn't charge anything as both payments had failed, and we did look on the issue as soon as people got back to work on Monday morning.

If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to contact our support group.
Sorry again for the inconvenience.

Another case of someone "screaming" before they where actually hurt ...... I think an apology may be in order here!!.....

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East Anglian Data Recovery Services
http://www.eadr.co.uk

"If it's your only copy - then it's not a backup!"

Correct me if I'm wrong, Seagate is selling a crippled version (FAT & NTFS) of R-Studio for $99 (reg price $129) when you can buy it from R-TT for $49.99 and get the full version (all file systems) for $79.99. Am I missing something?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

and some spelling lessons

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.