TOSHIBA US BLANKED MY HARD DRIVE TO FIX THE SCREEN! WHY?!? Irvine, California

MY LETTER TO TOSHIBA SERVICE
*****

To whom it may concern:

Please accept this as a formal complaint regarding repair services performed on my defective Toshiba Laptop. I am highly incensed at the careless abandon that was held for my personal information and files.  

I am sure you receive this complaint often- my laptop was reformatted to perform an unrelated repair.  My laptop's back light survived roughly 6 months.  The possibility, not inevitability, of reformatting my hard drive was explained to me upon completion of the repair order. If this been explained over the phone PRIOR to spending $25 on repair shipping, I would have made other arrangements.  I explained to the service representative that I COULD NOT SEE THE SCREEN IN ORDER TO BACK UP THE DRIVE. At that time, it should have been explained to me to not return my laptop until this back-up could be performed. I was not told that it is Repair Depot policy to reformat ALL hard drives to factory standards until tonight.  Further, the disclosures state that permission is being granted to reformat the drive, not that it is policy and procedure to reformat every repaired machines.  

To offset this risk, I stated in the notes section of the repair order that I was unable to back up the hard drive because the screen was black and that if this action was to be required to return the laptop to me.  This request was either not communicated or ignored.  Regardless, given the modern advances in communications technology, this is inexcusable.  

I take very good care of my laptop in order to avoid viruses or to damage its display.  Had this been a damage-related issue or fatal hard drive crash, I would have accepted full responsibility for the loss of my data.  I should have backed it up when I had the chance.  I am willing to accept an uncontrollable hard drive failure 
, not a controllable reformatting.  In this case, my defect was a burned out LCD screen and your repair team failed to exhibit common sense in reading my request and carelessly deleted my data to fix a completely unrelated issue.  I have essentially been sent a new laptop at this point. 

Given the irreversible problem this has created, I want a refund for my service shipping costs (~$25) and the retail cost of my laptop (~$300).  I will look to replace this machine as soon as my budget allows to buy a more reliable one with a company that takes a common sense approach to repairing their defective machines.  Legal disclosure or not, your repair/service process is devoid of common sense and I am highly disappointed with your company. 

I look forward to your reply. 

Sincerely...