Class Action Suit Filled Over webOS Backups

palm webos backup fail A new class action lawsuit has been filed against Palm Inc. and Sprint in the U.S. District court over issues with the webOS backup system. The suit alleges that Palm Pre customers have unnecessarily suffered catastrophic data loss including their contacts, calendars and other personal information as a result of failed backups.

In this specific case a Palm Pre customer, Jason Standiford, exchanged his phone under warranty at a local Sprint store. Mr. Standiford had already gone through three previous warranty exchanges for his Pre due to various hardware issues. To summarize, on his fourth exchange a Sprint store clerk "permanently deleted" his only backup available and the Palm profile restoration subsequently failed to recover a majority of Standiford's data. After many trials, it took three weeks for a Palm technician to partially restore some of his missing records.

The suit claims that each day information is backed up it wipes out the previous day's information, inadequate to ensure the information isn't lost. It also does not fully backup the entire contents of the device. This has been a common complaint on many online forums and the suit goes onto state that this is a "frequent experience" for users switching from one webOS device to another.

The full lawsuit background and paperwork can be read online here. (.pdf link)

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'frequent experience'

ScottG @ 12/8/2009 11:24:43 AM # Q
Yep!, I have it all the FRIGGING Time. Sprint told me "That's just the way it is sometimes." I had to go an buy a program called "MissingSync" to do what they can't or wont do for their customers.

I've gone through 3 phones too, and each time had to put all the info back in every single time, and no I wont use Google because I don't trust it being on the Net at all. I have the thing turned off from making the backup to PALM, because I had problems every time it does a backup!

Maybe I should file against them too, and then I could win a million dollars which all goes to the lawyers, and my award is the $39.99 I had to layout for the Missing Sync application to make a backup of the Palm Pre'


ScottG

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Another Reason for External Media

espc31 @ 12/8/2009 3:59:50 PM # Q
This is why backing up to an external media is so important. The "cloud" is just not reliable at this point in time. Service providers are concentrating on how may phones they can sell and not enough attention to their network infrastructure. This is why when a new "must have phone" is launched the network overloads and why they recommened you activate your device at one of there local stores.
EH
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Shame on PALM

RobertoV6 @ 12/8/2009 8:47:10 PM # Q
Palm just wanted to try and keep up with technology and chose to drop synchronization with personal computers knowing how important is for us loyal users.
Maybe just to show that they were cool and up to date trying to introduced "Cloud Syncing", but they really dropped the ball.
Knowing how sneaky Google is no one is going to do any syncing with them.
Besides, Palm backup only backups the personal data, not settings or apps.
I had to buy "Echo" to achieve two way sync with my pc and even this program would not be able to sync my Memos and my Tasks, which are very important to me and I'm sure to all of you out there.
Why would I have to buy a $30.00 third party program to sync my data from my pc and not even sync my Memos and Task. (Soon to come, hopefully).
I think Palm should have done better.
Now It's third party companies making profits with our hard earned dollars.

Maybe Palm saw "PC Syncing" too old fashion.
I've been a Palm loyal customer since 2001 and I have over 5000 entries on my Task and over 1000 Memos, which now I use as logs and I'm not able to see them in my phone but in the computer. Not to mention the phone book and the calendar.
I believe Palm should redeem themselves and do something about it.
I'm very happy they are being sued about this issues, I hope they learn something from it.

RE: Shame on PALM
rpa @ 12/9/2009 5:17:06 AM # Q
Syncing to Outlook running on the desktop is such a fundamental aspect of the old Palm experience I don't understand why Palm did not at least make this as an option with WebOS.
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are they legally required to backup data?

jms001 @ 12/9/2009 5:32:04 AM # Q
I fully agree that backing up cloud data is extremely important and even that the cloud seems crippled without good backup procedures. But with that said, is Palm legally required to backup cloud data? I don't know the answer to that but would love to hear from someone else who knows.
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No surprise!

CFreymarc @ 12/9/2009 1:01:47 PM # Q
I saw this coming down in spades! While wireless backup is nice. Making it exclusive to boost a board members stock portfolio is abusive to the rest of the organization. Can't wait to see how this is going to shake out.
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In this case the cloud didn't fail...

jnuneznj @ 12/14/2009 6:52:59 AM # Q
It seems that in this case the cloud didn't fail but the procedure to backup the system. I think PC Syncing is a must for now. I have been a long time user of The Missing Sync and I would have purchased it regardless of Palm's offering but a default PC Sync should be put in place.
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Clouds

rik57 @ 2/12/2010 9:26:44 AM # Q
Well I'm on Bell and the auto backup has saved me 3 times and has worked perfectly. I know it doesnt help losers like Mr Standiford but really a class action suiit? The one thing that set us apart form the other animals is the "ability" for us to blame others for stuff we dont prepare for.
RE: Clouds
e_tellurian @ 2/12/2010 4:39:36 PM # M Q
Does memory,thought and emotion also set us apart from animals. Our ability to learn from the past, learn from the present and learn for the future may also differentiate people from animals.

Peace,

E-T

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