Frontier Communications Thought Our Back Up Files Were Safe & Sound, Internet

Think your backed up files are safe and  sound? Think again.  Back up your precious files with Frontier Backup & Sharing and kiss your files good bye.

 It says on the Frontier Secure homepage (http://ww2.frontierhelp.com/) , "Never lose a precious photo or critical document."  They go on to say on their website,  "Don't hold up your life worrying about protecting your music, your photos or files.  Keep memories safe.  The times of your life should last a lifetime."  Well our photos and files didn't last a lifetime.  In fact, Frontier has told us that all of our files are gone.  How could files just disappear we wondered?
 
My name is Dana and I work for David B., an  architect and artist in Milan, New York. David is also the owner of 20+ rental properties that I manage.  As I am sure you can imagine, we have tens of thousands of photos, leases, CAD files of home designs, etc.  So backup of our documents is something that we take pretty seriously.   To that end, David purchased the Backup & Sharing program from Frontier Communications several years ago prior to my coming on board.  Frontier said they can't officially tell us when since they do not have that information in the system any longer.  Let me explain how this whole horrible mess happened.
 
On February 4th of this year, I was unable to access  Frontier Backup & Sharing.  https://frontier.ob.f-secure.com/.  The message I got was that it didn't recognize my email address.  I wasn't able to log in using any of the  three office email addresses.  I checked my email and saw that there was a back up report from Frontier dated  1/26/13.  It stated that 33,485 files had  been backed up from David's computer and 22,261 from  mine.  I figured there must be some glitch that was making it unable for me to  log in. 

I made two phone calls to Frontier that first day.  Spending an average of 31 minutes on the phone. I learned that we did not have back up service since a CSR by the name of ---need to get name from bill---- removed it from our plan.  Now why on earth would he do that?  He said that David told him to.  That is absurd.  David did speak to this individual about lowering our bill and in order to get the lower rate, the CSR explained that he had to remove all the features of our plan and then reload them.  For some reason, the Backup & Sharing Plan was not reloaded.

I can assure you and everyone else that I speak to that David would NEVER say he did not need the online backup.  In October, 2012 we lost our external hard drive backup, the Seagate Black Armor NAS 110.  We took that to the GEEK Squad but they couldn't retrieve any of the documents off the drive.  We didn't panic as we knew that all our files were being safely stored through the Frontier Secure Backup & Sharing Program. So we thought.

On February 4th, I expected a return call from Chris, employee # 06221 at the Internet Help Desk after he spoke with his supervisor, Mike. I never heard back.  On February 5th, I called again. In fact, I made three phone calls to Frontier that day.  The most promising was my call with Jennifer, employee #407609 or JRF 412 as she is known in the note system. 

Jennifer seemed very willing to help and made two different calls to try and figure out how this could have happened and if we could in fact get our files back.  In a recorded phone conversation with me, Jennifer was not only apologetic but appalled by the fact that the CSR absolved himself of any responsibility in not reloading the backup plan.  Instead, he blamed the customer.  Jennifer spoke to Michael Rand, a supervisor involved in the security department. 

She delivered the bad news that they didn't think they would retriever our files.  This didn't make sense to us.  David said, "If we were terrorists, they would have our files in a heartbeat."  Jokes helped because otherwise we would be in tears.  At that time, the magnitude of our loss hadn't quite sunk in.  Sometimes you don't know what is missing until you actually need it. Jennifer said she would get back to me as she tried to resolve the problem.

 On February 8th, without a word from Jennifer, I called Frontier again looking for answers.  I got Roger in the Ft. Wayne, Indiana call center.  We spoke for 46 minutes.  Basically, it was me telling my tale for the umpteenth time.  Roger said he would talk to his supervisor, Cynthia Alexander.   

On February 11th, without a call from Cynthia Alexander, I phoned Frontier again.  This time I spoke with Evan Dingman, employee # 06453.  Evan was the one who delivered the fateful blow that the files were in fact lost. Incomprehensible.  "Never lose a precious photo or critical document."  Was this just false advertising?
 
The next day I called Cynthia Alexander or she called me.  Despite copious log taking, I don't recall who initiated the contact.  I have to say through it all I have remained calm. I have tried to be somewhat Zen about the whole situation despite ridiculous amounts of time trying to resolve this and spending hours retyping and recreating documents and spreadsheets that had been lost. While, frustrating and time consuming for me, it has hurt David far more.  On the most basic level, he is paying me to reinvent the wheel.  But he has lost far more. 

He can't replace all the photos that he has taken over the years, all the memories that have been lost.  This of course is priceless.  Not only are we talking about his personal life but his professional life.  As an architect, he has spent countless hours producing architectural documents for all the homes he has constructed over the years.  He has been a licensed architect since the early 90's and had a lot of his early drawings put on CAD files.  As an artists, professional photos of his work are gone.

How do you assign a monetary value to all this? Frontier seems to think that our lost is worth $143.76.  Cynthia Alexander advised that Frontier was willing to give us two years of Backup and Sharing Service. One year to credit our service and one year of service going forward.  At $5.99 a month , this comes to $143.76 over the two years.  SHOCKING!!!! I wondered if she was joking.  At this point, I asked David to step in.  David spoke to Cynthia and Markee Brown, the call center manager, who after consulting with some senior level staff advised that they will only give us two years credit.  David told Cynthia that he was not pleased with their offer and that they would hear from his legal counsel.

While we are considering taking legal action, we thought it important to get the word out that backing up your files may not be secure at all. Especially if that company happens to be Frontier Back Up and Sharing.  While this has been, and continues to be an unpleasant situation for us, we hope that you find some interest in it, and in the interest so many people with so many things to save may find in our story.