Nick's dashboard

I recently discovered that Carbonite quietly stopped backing up files of certain types and sizes, and in certain directories -WITHOUT TELLING ME!

Thank God, I happened to notice that
a) none of my home video files were being backed up
b) installable programs that I had purchased on CD and backed up were missing files necessary for them to be re-installable, and
c) A number of my actual documents were missing, seemingly at random.

An email to Carbonite generated the following response (3 days later):
- Videos are no longer backed up by default. I need to manually select each video file and tell Carbonite to back it up (!!!!)
- Carbonite was "never designed to backup program files", so it ignores .exe's and dozens of other file types. When I asked them how I was supposed to restore the software I've purchased on CD, they said I should just reinstall them from the original CDs. Would those be the original CDs that were destroyed in the fire/flood/theft that I bought a backup service in the first place to protect myself against?
- Carbonite ignores files with “special characters” in their file name, like underscores. Like the “special characters” that are in about a third of my critical documents' file names?

By not telling me that it ignored a bunch of my files, seemingly at random, and telling me that my “backup was complete”, it created a dangerous false sense of security. Not to mention that it’s a fundamental breach of their “unlimited backups made simple” advertising. Very limited backups, made very complicated.

I’m bailing to another service (maybe Mozy) not so much because I’m upset at them for playing this shell game with my data after paying $80, but because I don’t want to lose my data when the class action suits/user backlash brings them down.