Palm and Sprint Sued in Backup Class Action Lawsuit 147
File under "inevitable." A class action lawsuit has been filed in California against both Palm and Sprint over the problems some people have been having with restoring their Palm Profile. The suit, filed on behalf of Jason Standiford (and others), seeks "relief for the loss of personal data suffered." The suit repeatedly alleges that Palm only keeps the most recent backup and refreshes it every 24 hours, arguing that "Once a new backup is completed, all information from previous backups becomes irretrievable." We have heard of Palm managing to grab older data, however, as even Standiford experienced:
A few weeks later, Palm contacted Standiford, having recovered some of his information.
We won't speak to the validity, merit, or scope of the lawsuit, but we can say that more than a few people have lost data because of the issue, which to our understanding is a result of older versions of webOS not properly restoring backups made by newer versions. The best fix is to update any webOS phone with the latest OS with a 'dummy' profile before loading your real profile, as we have previously suggested. The second-best fix, we suppose, is to wait and see if this lawsuit squeezes any money out of either Palm or Sprint.
You can go read the entire lawsuit (in PDF form) here (via the Kansas City Star)
Thanks to GoSteelers for the tip!
147 Comments
YAY Jason!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hopefully this will put fire under their butt's to fix major "bone headed" programing problems!!
Before the Cloud, we had to back up manually..Otherwise you lose your phone thats the end. Can we sue Western digital because we lost our harddrive information? Really? We can sue because WE decided that WE will put all our information in one basket?
It was his fourth phone due to defects....he is either unlucky or abusive. I am still on my first; no probs.He lost all his contacts and calendar events; poor baby. Palm could lose all my calendar, contacts, ringtones, etc, but I have all stored on google or my computer..........
From my personal experience, you do not have to be particularly unlucky, or abusive, to go through several Pres to get a good one.
I just got off of the phone with Palm because a Sprint representative told me they had a fix for the issue. They did not. I am one of those people who got all of their contacts lost. I was partially lucky in that I hadn't sold my previous phone from verizon, but I still lost invaluable contacts from people I met shortly after switching to Sprint. I have since loaded all of those contacts that I do have into a google account. But the older ones are still gone. I'm pissed, yes. It is actually Palm's fault, no denying that. Will I jump in on this lawsuit? hell no, the lawyers will reap all of the benefits anyway. I would be happy if Sprint would just switch my phone to something not WebOS. I'm on my 3rd, they ordered me a 4th, but I really wanted to ditch Palm due to their poor QA and frustration I have had with their useless tech support (that wants to charge for their wonderful service) for problems they caused. I talked to a representative last night who offered me $150 for the phone and I would have to pay out of contract price for another phone... so I would have lost $50 off the bat from what I paid for the phone and have to pay about $300 for a comparable phone (HTC Hero, which is actually cheaper, but has many advantages over the pre that I could use). I told her I would be insane to agree to such a rediculous offer, and I would. I could just sell this phone on ebay for more than $150.
Oh please.
Can I sue because when I click the PDF link I get the "too many cards open" error?
Anybody suprised this came out of California? Suprising like finding out the Frenchy French like cheese, or Italians like pasta...
As a native Californian, I can certainly echo that sentiment. The amount of frivolous lawsuits in this state is SHAMEFUL! Every stupid thing has to be resolved through a lawsuit. Why? Because of greedy lawyers and their rich clients. It shows an inherent lack of character when a person or group's first response is to manipulate the legal system to work out a resolution to something.
Ugh. California could be so much better than this.
I don't think that's the reason. I think that Californians have a tendency to trust the government more than average. And as a result, any and all disputes require the government to resolve them.
I think that too much trust in the state breeds this sort of behavior in people. I happen to be highly distrustful of government, but if I implicitly trusted the state, I would not think the problem was too many lawsuits. I'd think it was too few. If I trusted the state, why wouldn't I want more people going there to resolve their disputes?
I've always thought lawsuits were a way for normal people to make changes. Regulation is the government way. Lawsuits are the way of the people. Lawsuits fixed the exploding Pinto, not government regulation. Yes, there are frivolous lawsuits, but not as many as people think. There are also a whole lot of frivolous government regulations, which waste a ton more time and don't work as well. Look at the financial collapse - Did government regulation help.
Antitrust laws used to be a way to stop monopolistic and anticompetitive behavior. But not so much today. There are stil Antitrust laws that should stop iTunes from blocking access by Pre, such as the prohibition against tying contracts.
Anybody want to join a class action against iTunes so they'll stop blocking Pre access?
I'm going to sue Palm because I scraped my knuckle on the pavement trying to pick my Pre up off the ground when I dropped it. Then I'll sue them again for my phone breaking when it hit the ground and got run over by the bus.
Then I'll sue AT&T because I just don't like them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZL12uc5qQg
"Then I'll sue AT&T because I just don't like them."
Hey! Me first! I want to sue AT&T because they're not carrying the Pre, and AT&T's signal strength is better in my area of the office. That emotional tug must be worth millions on its own.
Then I'm going to sue Apple because they keep changing the products they own the intellectual property rights to so they stop working with non-Apple devices. I'll own the company by the time I'm done.
Then I'm going to sue my own lawyer, for taking on such frivolous lawsuits and clogging up the court system.
And if anybody laughs at my diabolical scheme to get rich quick without having to work a single minute, I'll sue them too, somewhere in the middle of all the Apple and AT&T action.
/extreme sarcasm off
It sounds as though you want to play the "Litigation Lottery" as Glenn Beck called it.
That's it. I'm suing you, and Orgasmo too while I'm at it... (BTW, off topic but that was one funny movie!)
:)
WOW! I hope Palm and Sprint win this lawsuit, causing Jason to have to pay for his lawyers time. This is just stupid. Everyone is so sue happy these days for stupid reasons.
Jason is just mad the phone number of the girl he was stalking got erased. Instead of palm spending time and money working on the backup issue they have to deal with this dork.
Another option is to back up your pre's data on your PC as suggested and shown on precentral.net using WebOS Quick Install.
Thanks precentral.net!
I don't know how accurate the info on the backup time frame is. I had done an erase after the latest update because my phone was sluggish. I lost all my contacts, and was unable to get my profile verified. They called me last week, restored my contacts. The rep said she was using the biggest file. I'm sure my phone had backed up over the course of the two weeks since I lost everything. Of course after I got my contacts back my bookmarks were gone. Regardless, if it will save someone a future headache or cause palm to give us something more reliable for backing up, I'm all for it. I just don't want to see palm as a company fail.
As much as I hate lawyers and BS lawsuits, maybe this will wake Palm up and realize that they need a simple way to backup EVERYTHING on ones PC like the good old days.... it is just criminal that we are unable to back up settings and texts and email and all the other things that we used to be able to do years ago on previous Palm devices...why do I feel like I have less features with my "cutting edge" PRE than I did with my old Treo or Centro?
emails DO NOT get backed up and never have. They are stored on the exchange or mail server and have never been saved in a backup.
This suit has to be one of the most half-a$$ suits I have ever seen and will be thrown out cause of that alone. Alot of the ranting I saw in it isn't factual. Did he even read the TOC for the system?? I lost my data too but frivolous suits that get nowhere aint the solution. There are OTHER means of data management and is ULTIMATELY the responsibility of the user to ACTUALLY use them..
On the other hand, was kinda expecting this suit comming even in an ideal world.
Is there any way we can maybe stop with the ignorant, misinformed, lifted-straight-from-Rush-Limbaugh crap about frivolous lawsuits?
Frivolous lawsuits are so rare that they actually make the news. (And even then, they're usually not frivolous. Case in point, the classic McDonald's hot coffee example that ignorant people like to trot out, without even having read the case.)
This is not a frivolous lawsuit: it alleges a real defect of service or product, it alleges real damages, and it seeks a real remedy. It may not be a *winning* lawsuit, but it is so far from being a frivolous lawsuit that the collective stupidity involved in calling it frivolous is making my head hurt.
Just sayin'.
Liebeck v. McDonald's? Really? I'm saddened that this is your best argument...
Really? That's your retort? You should read the case-- McDonals was undoubtedly at fault. But then again reactionary sheeple don't read the cases, they just repeat what Sean told them because somewhere, far back in their heads, they still hold to this notion that it could be them that's in charge of a Billion dollar company and to hell with all those peasants wanting to stand up for the rights and protections granted to them by their government! BAH!!
Seriously, read more.
I haven't read the case. So I don't know the merits of it. However, on the surface it seems trivial. And it seems like something that we don't need the state to solve. But I have a very large distrust of the government that is biasing my thinking. I've noticed that some have a much bigger trust of the government, and tend to see these cases differently.
One thing I would note for you, however, is that in the United States, rights are not granted by the government. People have rights independent of the government. The government simply enumerates the rights that it promises to protect. It doesn't grant them. I think the mindset of the framers is captured when they describe rights as "endowed by our creator".
The significance of this is that if the government is the granter of rights, then the government can take them away with (at most) political repercussions. But if the government is not the granter of rights, then when the government takes them away, they're committing a crime.
$0.02
Hmm, I wonder... So if rights are "endowed by our creator", does this mean atheists have no rights? Hmm...
I don't know what the implication is for atheists. But what the framers meant (I think) is that all people are born with these rights. They aren't given by any process other than being born. And that any government that takes away such rights is committing a crime.
So because my xbox 360 controller doesn't say "Don't swallow this it could be harmful" I can sue them if I swallow it?
They are rare?
Do we really need to start a list? Crap,just as McD's of how many lawsuits they get hit with because of people being stupid and lazy.
Sad thing is,this guy could win mainly because he's in Cali. Anywhere else and he would be laughed out of court.
The link is to a top 7 of these 'rare lawsuits'.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2160489/posts
Check out
http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp
It turns out that list you cited is a fabrication.
It is interesting to see how well the McDonalds PR worked. Because the safely controls WERE removed from the coffee relevant to the McDonalds case and the coffee temperature was PROVEN to be hazardously hot. i.e. negligently dangerous. And McDonalds failed to settle over a couple thousand dollars worth of medical bills.
It is a terrible example to cite.
And that justifies huge punitive awards in a civil case? Civil suits exist to make someone who's been wronged whole. Not to punish the offender. Punishment is *supposed* to be carried out by the criminal courts, not the civil courts.
IMHO, what the McDonald's hot coffee case demonstrates is Steve Dallas' first law of lawsuits: you sue those who have money. Had this civil suit been carried out against the local diner, who's barely making ends meet, do you think it would have been a $3m award?
Getting back on topic, the people who are suing sprint & palm are violating the first law of lawsuits.
"Getting back on topic, the people who are suing sprint & palm are violating the first law of lawsuits."
Ouch!!!
I can think of a lot of words to describe frivolous lawsuits but "rare" isn't one of them. Anyone involved in such abuse of our legal system should be summairly lined up and wedgied.
Well, at least the complaint contains one true statement.
Page 3, line 19: "The plaintiff is currently ignorant".
So at least it speaks some truth!
LOL!!! That really made me laugh.
this lawsuit is basically suing palm and sprint due to my data loss, I wonder if this jason guy had patches in his phone, which ended ur not working and he had to webdoc his phone. And being ignorant he probably did not backup his info. Really the main reason soo many backup werw failures were people webdocing their phones after patches went wrong... Way to wrong. And yes there are those who got replacement phones and I understand this story.
I'm off to sue sprint since I went roaming at my house, when in the coverage map states I have "fair" coverage
I don't like lawsuits, but I hope this forces Palm to address this as a HIGH priority.
I just happened to go into the Backup app a couple hours ago and it said, though backup was turned on, it had not done a backup in FOUR DAYS.
This is not the first time this has happened, and I know it has happened to many others and that Palm is aware of it.
I also lost personal data (Memos) because of the bug in doing a restore to a different version than you backed up from.
I find it interesting that after reading your comment I went to check my last backup time and it was 12/03/09 11:18pm over 4 days ago. hmmm...
Hey!!! Mine has not backed up since 12/4/09 7:14 AM. Today is 12/8/09.
Jeesh, this is ridiculous. I lost my contact data when i switched to a pixi, but surprise surprise, all my contacts where backed up on google. Not to mention that i have my contacts also backed up on my palm desktop using Echo. Echo + google is a decent emergency backup, and only sets you back 30 bucks. Somebody in Cali is laaazyyyyy.
Can a Pre be sued for impersonating an Oreo?
dbd -- you are a professional troll. You've trolled this site for so long. Don't you think its just time to give up?
hahahaha funny and satiracle... love it
hahaha!!!!!! excellent, best comment ever!!!!!
Well maybe some good will come out of this. May then get the ability to export your palm profile PIM data, need this one way or another with memos.
Oh come on! I still can't figure out what the problem is... all my Pre contacts, calendars and e-mails are linked to a web service via Synergy or to a pop account. The Palm backup is pointless anyway because it's already backed up! I guess the ordeal or re-inputting his account and password information was just too much.
Huh? Either you have no historical data from older Palm devices, or you manually copied all of your contacts from Palm to another profile such as Google. Or ... you very recently got your phone and used one of the newer homebrew methods to extract your Palm profile data so you can import it into Google.
Otherwise, you just haven't been paying attention to the large number of complaints of people who lost all or more of their contacts.
Nope, no older Palm device (at least not in linear progression) but what does that matter? Besides contacts I already had in Outlook (which I moved to Google Contacts) I exported all my old phone contacts (VX9900) to Google Contacts as well. I also back those up by exporting on a regular basis. People who have lost all of their contacts are simply being lazy (and imprudent with their "important" data).
If you have a previous Palm device and you follow Palm's explicit instructions on how to get your old data into your Pre, you will end up with the only (new) copy of your data being in the Palm profile. This means that any changes or additions will only be in your Palm profile. If you have thousands of contacts and calendar entries, manually copying them to Google is rather painful.
When you are starting out from scratch, it's different.
Prediction when it settles: Members of the aggrieved class get a $5 coupon off their next Palm purchase, the lawyers get $5 million. What a scam.
Sad but true!
Hello all, I recommend everyone uses google as their primary back up. It works great for me. I don't have a single contact or calendar event going to my palm profile. Having a gmail account and google calendar works way smoother than using palm's once a day back up. All that palm remembers for me is which apps I previously installed and re-installs them for me. Trust me, get a gmail account!!!
Could you, or someone else, write a good article that describes this whole process?
Right now I am living with the Palm profile as my source and keeping copies occasionally of the PalmDatabase.db3 file.
I use gmail, but what I don't get is how I "move" my contacts from the Palm profile to gmail -- like I said this is a great opportunity for someone to write an article.
you dont need an article. go to gmail.com. sign up for an email account. go on your pre or pixi. put in the info for your new gmail account. in 15 minutes at the most your phone and gmail will be synced up. all your contacts that were in your phone should be in gmail.
to take this further, you can import most pop and some imap accounts into your gmail account. then all your emails can be sent to one account. you choose if you want the response you send back to come from gmail address or the original address.
if you use google calendars then it syncs the same with the phones as well.
any changes you make in email, contacts, calendars are synced and reflected on phone and internet database within 15 minutes. this has worked for me for a couple of years.
Go to your gmail acct (www.gmail.com) and log in. Check contacts and see if they match. If not go to contacts on your Pre and see if your gmail acct is listed; if not add it. I recommend using as default. Sync it. Do same for calendar.Palm calendar does not sync but google does nicely
I agree about the google thing. How is this any different than any other phone on the market? I used to have a motorazr that I threw against a brick fireplace when a girl broke up with me. Now should I have sued moto for not backing up my stuff? Palm gives you atleast a chance of getting ur stuff back after (usually users fault) something happens, and you have the nerve to sue them? Android doesn't back u p stuff. Iphone doesn't back stuff up. WTF is this guy complaining about? Could the service be better? Absolutely! But sueing a great company that's based itself on this one OS and detracting their money and focus from fixing a few annoying things that plaque it and have to deal with some stupid people! Someone get this guy an iphone and tell him to have fun sueing apple! Really starting to hate california for allowing these BS lawsuits to go on!!!
I don't see this as particularly a particularly frivolous lawsuit...for what it's worth, my partner lost all of his contacts a few weeks ago and Palm called him this evening with the good news that they were able to recover them and he had them all back after a restore.
The fact is that palm said you can restore your data and the fact is it doesnt work.I am tired of all you palm loyalist thinkin that palms never wrong and its always the users fault its like buying a car and when you pick it up the trunk dont open.There has to be some type of accountablity here and weather I webos doctor my phone or not I should still be able to have my data restored if not then why even have it has a feature.I would love to see how you would explain why it has taken palm 7 months to open up there own sdk but het thats our faults to right.The Pre is failing get over it.Now the only question is how long will it take them to kill it
you are an ignorant fool... the pre is obviously not failing, which is why they are going to open it up to verizon too next year... get your facts straight b4 you run your mouth. you must be an iphone or droid yuppy
well jackass i own a pre and my back up didnt work either and no i didnt homebrew anything.what do you have to say to that you are just another blind palm loyalist and you need to keep your mouth shut it you dont know what you are talkig about
first off, didnt mention homebrew... second, if you cant take the heat dont dish it... third, i actually do know what im talking about... you should check up on the factual evidence about palm's pre doing well and going to verizon next year... im not a loyalist, im a realist
were you smart enough to update ur webos to the last version the phone did a backup?
please reply
Sorry guy the only way someone can screw up a backup is by screwing up his profile himself!
He did it himself and Palm can build a system strong enough to protect against the user itself!
Nobody can!
This guy did what anyone can do on a Mac or PC, and this is say FORMAT DRIVE!
Who's responsible, Microsoft/Apple or the user!
Rob
Sorry guy the only way someone can screw up a backup is by screwing up his profile himself!
This is the first time I've seen this assertion. Do you have data to back this up? I very strongly doubt -- based on the number of complaints that we've heard of backup restoral failures -- that you are correct here.
Right, thats why SOOOOOO many people, including myself, lost all their contacts... every last one of them. I was just lucky enough I hadn't wiped out my old Verizon phone, so I got them back and opened a google account. Their servers don't loose people's data... funny how that works, they test products thoroughly before bringing it to market. I got my 4th Pre today and the f'ing thing has the worst oreo effect of all times! Plus, i did the little trick where you create a bum account, update, purge and sign in to no avail. I'm sick of Palm. When I called their tech support, they were telling me how lucky I was that they extended their support to Pre customers and that I had until June for any repairs to be done on my Pre... their warantee only covers your original phone, which I haven't had since my first week with Sprint.
Plus, I still haven't received a call from their "Level 3 Support Team" to tell me where my contacts have magically disappeared to.
I was away from home for 2 months and met some new interesting people who's contacts were added to the phone prior to returning home. I have none of their contact information, and no way to get it as we all live in different parts of the country. Thats invaluable data to me. I had no other means of copying down their info short of pen and paper, and I'm sure I would have lost that myself... thats why I have a SMARTphone... however, its the dumbest POS I have ever owned.
If by "the Pre is failing" you mean it is failing in the marketplace, then I disagree with you. Yes, there are plenty of people complaining. But look at the other forums for other devices. You'll see the same thing there. There is no perfect device at the moment.
Palm has a great opportunity right now, if they can get their act together, finish the Pre, allow native apps, and allow an easy way to back up ALL data from a Pre. If they can't follow through on this, they may fail later. (I certainly hope not.) But they are not failing right now.
Please, the Pre and Pixi are a joke. The Pre has the hardware, but the OS is so far behind in development I don't see how they could possibly pull out. I know their "goals" aren't to be the head of the market, but please. Tell me one thing this phone does better than other phones. One niche it has? Multi-tasking? It isn't even really multi-tasking. It just puts the app on pause while another app is loaded. ALL ANDROID PHONES DO THIS CURRENTLY, and actually better than the pre as there are no error messages about too many cards being open when you have just 1 card open (Happened to me and I had a screen shot of it). The platform is not friendly for development due to apps requiring to be a resource hog. Lexi-comp, a leader in portable pharmaceutical software was supposed to release their version of the software on WebOS a few weeks ago. RIght before release, Palm released 1.3.1, which screwed them. The app didn't work anymore (not that it worked particularly well before 1.2.1 due to it being a resource hog with just being an app consisting of text). They have had to go back to the drawing board. I wouldn't be surprised if they call it quits all together. That would be a deal breaker entirely for me. I got the pre because of their announcement to develop for WebOS and a release date of Fall '09. That date has come and passed. I was a beta tester for the app and after seeing the troubles with the app, I have no intentions of even dabbing into WebOS. It has way too many problems currently that I don't see them being able to fix without creating new devices that have higher performance (and as a result either rediculous batteries or terrible battery life).
The real lawsuit should be the loss of all text message chat logs, and the loss of call logs! 6 months after a release and there is no way to back them up. Put me down for that one.
All I can say is WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW....I so thought about filing a suit but I was joking around like haha wouldnt it be funny if I could sue for this but WOOOOW somebody actually did it.... Hmmm personally I mean c'mon jason it IS TECHNOLOGY but at the same time I never knew it was only for the last 24 hr back up...... As bad as it sounds Im thinkin iphone next year.
you have got to be kidding me... whats next, suing my college because im not getting a 4.0? anyone who has a clue on how to live their life knows that you always back things up in another way, a duplicate if you will... im suuuure this guy doesnt have any of his old phones to find his contacts in does he? i mean keeping an old one like i kept my old centro would only be the smart thing to do... oh wait, i forgot, we are not dealing with a smart guy here. this is why i hate the public, people like this
How, exactly, do you propose to back up the Palm Profile plus all of the data outside the Palm Profile in another way -- on a stock Pre without homebrew? It's legitimate to complain about how high the failure rate is for Palm backup restoral and it's legitimate to complain about the fraction of important data on the phone that is not backed up.
I understand insulting people who bring a lawsuit you feel is frivolous. And IMHO a lawsuit is not an appropriate way to solve this problem. But the level of insult in this blog for people who are dissatisfied with the backup provided by Palm is just amazing to me.
You do understand that it is currently impossible to back up all important data on a Palm Pre? For example, Palm is not currently backing up data from third party applications and there is no API provided that can do so.
There are some very nice hacks that will allow you to export a lot of your data, but these are not supported by Palm and could become broken by any future software update. (This won't stop me from using them.)
do you realize you contradicted yourself like three times? also, what phone has ever allowed you to back up EVERYTHING you have put on it? apps used to be games and programs you used to buy through sprint, but after a certain amount of time, it expired, just like ringers... does that mean when i had to have my wife's centro replaced i should have cried foul and brought a lawsuit over the lost ringers? there is more important stuff to worry about in life like people out there who cant afford to even own a phone let alone squabble over this
If I contradicted myself like (sic) three times, please let me know what these contradictions are.
Every PalmOS device (smartphone or not) before the Pre allowed you to backup EVERYTHING you put on it. Have you never owned a Palm before? I am not as familiar with the WinMo Palm devices, as I never owned one.
My Palm Tungsten T|3, when I did a USB sync to desktop, syncronized absolutely everything to my desktop. I could run over my Palm with my car, buy another of the same model, plug it in, sync, and I would have everything. I am serious. Every app. Every game. Every config setting. Every document. Everything. There would be no way to tell that you changed the device.
Apparently there are a lot of people whose first Palm device was a Pre, and they don't understand just how effective the PalmOS sync was as a backup. Even though this is pointed out in just about every topic where these backup failures are discussed.
actually i owned a centro and my wife still has her centro... neither back up everything with sync... for EXAMPLE, the games and ringers, like i said before... second, i was embellishing, but you brought arguments then said you would still use the apps and phone... so why even argue? its wasting time
For myself, I understand the risk. I'm a programmer. I'm not afraid to root my phone, copy database files off, and poke around in the database to extract my data if necessary. I'm not an average user.
The reason I responded was the harshness of your reply, and because you criticized the person for failing to do something that is currently impossible to do. It's fair to criticize the guy for the lawsuit itself. (Which I doubt will ever go to court, and there's just no way this class action lawsuit can win.) But so many people are harshly blaming the user as if all Palm backup restoral failures are the user's fault. 1) This is hardly an established fact. 2) Quite a lot of stuff is not backed up.
OK, cell phone games and ringers I didn't know about. Those must have been stored in a separate fashion from the standard Palm database files. Although I'm a little surprised that desktop sync still wouldn't sync them. However, the overwhelming majority of the data on the phone -- the irreplaceable data if you will -- was all backed up by a sync. And this just isn't true -- today -- of a Pre.
I have absolute trust that given time, either Palm will address this, or the homebrew community will. (And the homebrew community seems to be getting close!) I don't see this as a long term issue. But it seems harsh to be so strongly critical of people who lost data that it is not possible to back up in any other way, right now.
ill be honest... i bet you know what youre talking about when it comes to phones... but i was harsh because there is also something called life-- you never leave something to one copy... i dont care if you have to write your information in a book somewhere in order to back it up, you do so if its that important... he has other choices- in 2009 life is limitless... so i do blame the user... i know i have a backup in case my pre dies... its the only smart way to CYOA- cover your own ***
In fewer words ... why argue? My sense of fairness.
Criticize the person for bringing the class action lawsuit; I won't complain. Criticize the person because they didn't do the impossible or because they care about their data, and I'll step in to say, "Let's stay reasonable."
I'm not defending *myself* here. I'm not arguing because I have personally experienced this problem. I'm arguing because people are being unfairly harsh in their criticism of others and because I think it's reasonable to be critical of the current state of backup in WebOS. ESPECIALLY for those coming from past PalmOS devices where the backup was so thorough.
I'm completely serious. If my T|3 got destroyed and I bought a new one and synced to it from my desktop, there would be no way to tell that the hardware had changed. For all intents and purposes, it would be the *same* device that got destroyed, at least as of my last backup.
thats fine and all, but what gets me is this-- when my wife's centro died because she was out on a damp day (wasnt even raining) she couldnt sync her phone to her computer... so she bit the bullet and just took everything from her last sync and used her other backup, her trusty address book, to finish off what she missed... but i didnt go and sue palm and sprint for a KNOWN problem with the centro, where they were sensitive enough to let air moisture ruin the charging hardware... no, i was a man about things and learned what needed to be done differently
And this response of yours was entirely reasonable and fair. Yes, there are too many lawsuits, often over trivial things. The only good thing about this class action suit is that it's difficult to imagine it going anywhere.
I fully expect that Palm is working on backup, among the other things they're working on. By the time this case actually makes it to court (if it even goes that far), I would be surprised if those backup problems still exist. That is, Palm will have fixed whatever is causing today's problems that people run into.
I find it difficult to imagine any judge taking this seriously, short of a contract between this individual and Palm or Sprint that makes a guarantee about data backup. (Obviously, no such contract exists.)
i've had to use the backup twice(and didn't have to just the easiest solution.) it worked perfectly. If ur so broken up over losing ur stuff(that you didn't back up urslef) than maybe you don't deserve to live. Oh my god, I lost all my contacts, that's my entire life gone....what am I going to do??? Maybe I should kill myself......no wait i'll just sue someone...that will make it all better
Once they prove that this guy had done some Homebrew stuff on his phone, the lawsuit will be thrown out!
Then Palm can say that this guy, had modified his phone without their permission and caused the problem himself!
End of lawsuit!
Beginning of trouble with Homebrew!
Rob
there wont be any trouble with homebrew... palm embraces it too closely
What an idiot. What kind of data was he storing on his phone to need a lawsuit? Any dimwit in the digital age knows you don't keep all your data in one place! Besides, I don't ever remember signing any kind of contract stating that Palm or Sprint was solely responsible for my data. I hope he ends up paying Palm's and Sprint's attorney's fees.
I really doubt that this will go all the way to court.
see this is what i was saying! thank god others have common sense too... and i agree... let this grody gnome pay for their fees and set a precedent for not being able to sue them again for this
If Jason Wins This Do We All Get Paid Cause I Lost my CONTACTS and there wasnt anyway to get them back And I Know A Couple Of Other Guys That Lost Theres Too..lol... man Why do people have to sue. I know the palm pre is new and you also gots to understand that you are going to be running in to some problems here and now and there will be fixes but man if you aint paciant.. THEN WHY IN THE HELL DO YOU HAVE A PALM PRE?
Let me get this straight; you mean that Palm has launched their company saving, iPhone killing device into the market place without a serious backup system for data? Really?
Never mind this legal action. I thought Danger's Sidekick was the last device with that kind of stupidity built in.
As a Mac user with an iPhone, a Time Machine backup drive, and MobileMe, I have four points of failure. I couldn't lose data from my phone if I tried. Even without the backup drive and MobileMe, I would still have backups in iTunes on my computer. It is virtually idiot proof.
How is it Palm didn't bake this sort of backup into the process from the start? That is seriously messed up. Palm shouldn't be sued; they should be ignored and abandoned, left for dead.
I hole heartedly agree with you!!!
Don't count on mobile me. Been there done that. Its crap. II should have sued apple.
I "lost" my contacts, but guess what. DTAT. Don't Trust Anything Technical. I backed up my PalmDatabase.db3 file (manually, without even knowing about these issues). When my "backup" failed to restore, I exported the contacts from the PalmDatabase.db3 file and uploaded them to Google.
I'll bet that somewhere in the "I Agree" that we click on the Pre, that it says they're not liable for info lost.
Though I lost data, I *opt out* of this class. It's just BS.
I lost almost all of my Palm Profile data. Of all my contacts, only 3 remained - one I have never even called, and another I think was Sprint CS. I lost a ton of business related contact information. Now, when people call, I have to ask who's calling - doesn't make me feel too professional.
so how does one (i also lost my contacts) join or is it automatic enrollment?!?!
Reminds me of Weird Al's song "I'll Sue Ya!"
I sued Verizon
'Cause I get all depressed
Any time my cell phone is roaming
I sued Colorado
'Cause you know, I think it looks a little bit too much
Like Wyoming
I sued Neiman Marcus
'Cause they put up their Christmas decorations
Way out of season
I sued Ben Affleck
...
Aw, do I even need a reason?
I just posted that video a few comments up.
One of his funniest to date, IMO.
And then I see the link I posted got removed.
FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw
Can I sue Palm for the GPU not being accessed yet? Will that make them work faster?
another frivolous lawsuit
How ridiculous. Who keeps data on there phone that if you lost it, it would hurt you. Thats just stupid. I've done work on PDA's and my work phone for years. I've never lost anything because I get to to my computer ASAP. Transfer to my laptop or e-mail to myself. I do the same thing on my pre. As soon as I do a note or take a picture for work, I e-mail it to myself. As far as contacts, I back mine up to Google.
I HATE lawyers that jump at the chance to sue!!!
That being said, particular to backing up data I say ***k Palm. I want to back up stuff as easy as on my Treo. WTF.
As far as WebOS, its still the best, just a lil impatient and desiring some functions to be added.
the pre is a computer with a phone on it. He should have known better to backup his data elsewhere as well. NEVER STORE YOUR DATA IN JUST ONE PLACE. This is the first rule of thumb when dealing with "sensitive" data. He is a fool.
i think this lawsuit is great. i like palm and sprint, but i hate when big corps think they can get away with murder without even an apology. Go get em!
Did Palm murder someone??? I don't think so... In fact, I dislike Palm as anyone else but Palm has gone OUT of their way to help users make WebOS be successful. They have spent countless hours helping homebrew developers create successful products and have infact taken EVERY bit of user feedback to improve their product.
Palm is a public company and like so they cannot tell everyone their intentions or new releases that are coming out until the time is right.
Finally. I don't know what is wrong with my Pre, but it WILL NOT automatically back up my data. If I don't remember to go in and do it manually, it will not backup. Even though it says it's set to back up every day. Hopefully they can get a fix out. I've had my phone since July, and even after 1.2 and 1.3 it still won't backup.
you are so dumb its sickening.
Why would you say this? Makes no sense to me...
Don't worry, obviously delete2end is an immature idiot. There are lots of people out in the world like him if this is your first encounter. I beleive it has comething to do with there mommies not loving them in childhood.
This comment was totally unnecessary. It didn't add anything to the conversation, and it clearly illustrated that you didn't actually read for content the post you responded to.
ditto
YAY! Another dumbass lawsuit.
you are the dumb ass for writing what you did. if you dont get what you pay for do you just let people or companies get away with it? you must as your indicate that you do.
I am going to steal $500 from you... what you going to do about it?
I believe it is referred to as 'heaven' ;-)
Can you imagine a world without lawyers.....?
wow they ARE TAKING IT THAT FAR? lets jump on the band wagon guys!!! ..lol oh wait back to reality. I myself have lost data, but now ive learned my lesson...to back it up myself! lazy ppl...
people are being lazy... they purchase the phone and service and are not getting what they paid for.... THAT IS CALLED THEFT OF A SERVICE!
This guy is an idiot. i hope he trips and falls.
I hope and pray that you die next time you walk out your front door. thats real nice on my part is it not?
wish you the best fuck face.
lol, loser. You have the same mindset as the idiots who default on their mortgage and blame the banks for giving you the loan. Gain some intelligence. Stop asking for handouts, take some responsibility for your own life.
You know what, Palm should have had a PC software based BackUp system in with their Over the air crap that doesn't work. Hope they learned a lesson that we still need our manual backups!!! Now come out with free software to backup our sensitive data and we'll leave them alone (everyone is just so greedy to make money).
The idiots are those comparing Palm losing your data to scraping your knuckle picking up your Pre (and other similar comparisons). Palm had an implied contract (if not a written one) with Pre owners that they would backup your data and restore it if you had to replace your Pre. They failed to do so. That is potentially an actionable breach of contract. The courts will decide, not the dweebs on this forum, as contract law decrees.
To those who say users should have backed up to their PCs: Palm never suggested that was necessary. To the contrary, they told us we should trust the cloud, it would take care of us.
I continue to be amazed at the number of excuses Pre lovers make for Palm's screwups.
i cant agree more
Well put
i couldnt agree less with your primitive post... just because someone is defending a product doesnt make them a LOVER... leave that terminology for the bedroom you lawsuit loving sycophant... and youre another one of those who apparently doesnt think for himself--
"To those who say users should have backed up to their PCs: Palm never suggested that was necessary. To the contrary, they told us we should trust the cloud, it would take care of us."
maybe if you thought for yourself and realized that no technology is able to be trusted, then you wouldnt make stupid arguments like that
by the way, i should know about technology, i have a dual mechanical and electrical engineering degree, and also an automotive technician degree... THINGS ARE BUILT TO FAIL- thats part of the point behind products today
I think that page 8 of the "GENERAL USER GUIDE: IMPORTANT SAFETY AND LEGAL INFORMATION", found in the Pre box, covers this. "Neither Palm nor its Suppliers shall be liable for.... loss of information or data loss, loss of revenue, loss of business or other financial loss"
ALL agreements regarding hardware/software have these statements because when dealing with electronic data NOTHING is 100% fool proof. Hardware fails and software can fail either by hacking or other influences that cause corruption of data.
Can you sue Microsoft every time their patch screws up something on your computer? If you could many people would be very wealthy by now.
What is the actual percentage of those who had a problem?
I lost data and had to restore it on my own. Some who have contacted Palm have been successful in restoring their data. Palm does archive the backups. So they are doing their part to put forth a good effort to maintain your backup.
They should be looking for the reason there was a failure and what common denominators were present in the ones that failed.
It might be different if EVERY Pre in use lost everything.
Hope the person starting the lawsuit and his lawyers are made to pay all related court costs and attorneys fees both Palms and Sprints.
Obviously, you are not an attorney. Just because a company such as Palm places that into their terms of use does not make it legal. Those words are written to prevent lawsuits from ever being filed but every attorney knows that the law does not afford Sprint nor Palm those types of protections when they make huge nationwide claims of what their product or service does for a customer. Sprint will lose if not settle, as the law is simply not on their side. Sprint and Palm both made representations to the public that their data was backed up and protected for them in the event of a software corruption, lost phone or whatever you can think of... did they follow through with their representations? Quite simply no, they did not...
God get a freaking clue as to how business works in the USA.
delete2end Were you able to get your data back?
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/217629-transplant-error-when-resto...
"that freaking worked! Thanks JHP!"
I hope you were successful! If so you may want to let others know so they may do a backup.
Palm and Sprint have no control over the possibility of data corruption at the users pre. If the data backed up was corrupted in some manner, then it will not restore. Any product that is able to connect to the internet has the possibility of being infected in some manner. That is why there is a multi billion dollar industry that protects computers against viruses worms trojans and other malware.
Yes, I got all of the contacts back as I had previous backups of my Palm Centro. I went to a Sprint store and convinced them to let me restore their Centro to my old Centro's backup state and then they transferred all of my contacts back to my Palm Pre. However, none of this is the point I am trying to make.
When I asked for help from you I was attempting to confirm that the backup strategy being talked about worked. Since I am no expert when it comes to WebOS I needed your help to confirm that it worked. Again, I thank you for your assistance.
However, this does not solve the problem that I did not get what I paid for from Sprint and Palm in the first place. My time is worth money... That is why I paid Sprint and Palm to backup my data. When they failed to backup and restore my data that constituted a breach of contract for which I had already paid. I choose not get ripped off....
I am very happy that this suit is moving forward. Have Palm or Sprint lose your data and your tune will change. I personally plan to join this suit if possible as Sprint made representations that my data would never be lost as everything was backed up automatically. When my phone started having issues, Sprint said I had to do a complete reset of the phone back to factory conditions and upon restoration all of my contacts were lost. Palm engineering called me three weeks later to inform me that they had got 16 out of 180 or so contacts back. I told them to fuck off as that is worthless to me. It is no where close to what what Palm and Sprint promised out of the phone and service offering from DAY FUCKING 1.
Time for Nokia to buy Palm and save the day.
Sprint & Palm did lose my data. But two comments:
1) I had the foresight to realize that putting all my eggs into one basket is stupid.
2) Had I not had this foresight, I'd not blame someone else for my stupidity.
I am not blaming someone else as I was not stupid. Sprint and Palm both promised me a service for which I bought their phone and paid my monthly phone bill. When it came time to utilize that service for which I paid they were unable to fulfill their end of the deal.
UMMMMMMMM..... I choose not to get ripped off so I am doing something about it.
I will let others get ripped off....but not me.
I agree that sprint & palm screwed up. But I don't think it merits a lawsuit. People screwup all the time. Devices fail. Services are not delivered. Most people, having experienced other people's screwups, recognizing that depending entirely on some other person puts them at risk. So they develop contingency plans to avoid the risk.
You are welcome to sue the pants off of sprint and palm. But recognize that some of us will think you a fool for not having a tiny bit of foresight to deal with this risk in a much simpler way.
If you are dead set on trying to get some sort of financial remuneration out of this, even that has a simpler option than a lawsuit. Try calling Sprint instead with the goal of restoring your lost contacts. It'll take some time on your part, but at some point Sprint will offer you something rather than lose your contract. Of course, if you act like a jerk, expect it take longer to get to this point.
right on mu7efcer... delete2end is just another one of the those people in the public who ruin it for the rest of us... no one likes to think for themselves anymore and they expect someone else to do the dirty work for them. maybe if these people have a backup like you and i, they wouldnt complain... but instead everything is everyone elses fault and we will never be right... im sure these people do not even STOP to CONSIDER they should use their minds that they were given when they were born
You have to admit, this phone screws up more than 99% of other phones, including smart phones. Ive never had to get a replacement phone before. I'm on my 4th. Got it today. And boy does it suck. It has the most rediculous oreo effect ever. Sprint does realize that this is a crappy phone. They don't go out saying it, because they have so much at stake for its success. But you know something is up when they will give you shit about a BB Curve screwing up (a cheap ass phone now) but will gladly replace your pre at no charge, despite you never paying for insurance on the phone.
uh if you actually check things out "rufflez" (snickers) there is a 1 yr warranty on 99% of new phones out there... so they have to do something in that first year regardless of insurance... maybe you would know that if you checked your facts
I asked the Palm representative. They told me their warranty is only for the original device purchased. They gave me the serial number of the phone they warranty. It is not my current one, or the one I will be receiving again in a few days.
well that rep was a moron, because sprint will tell you... all phones receive the year warranty from the moment they hit your hands... it has been that way with EVERY sprint phone i have ever owned... and believe me, i have owned a lot... i like to get a new phone once a year just for that fact. my wife had her centro replaced, and the replacement has a 1 yr warranty from the moment it hit her hands in september... i know what im talking about
I lost all my contacts as well and spent a couple hours at stores trying to get my contacts back and then a couple hours on the phone with sprint and with palm and no luck. I hope they don't charge me for the phone time spent with them while I was talking to palms techs. I finally ended up using my Blackberry with desktop manager and got most of the contacts back, but what a hassle..
So I was one of the people to lose their contacts in the great update disaster a while ago, and after i like many found out that adding contacts overwrites your last back-up of contacts. So after none of the steps I found on the site would work i figured hey why not call Palm it is their phone, OS, and cloud. while we were trouble shooting on a horrible 1x signal for what seemed to be some days i was told that i would get my case forwarded to the advanced help or tech team or whatever they're calling it over at Palm. So finally a month later i get a call back with what is suppose to be a new solution where they have the ability to access your previous data and while your doing a partial erase they restore your old contacts. I have not gone through the process because while I'm at my college apartment i have a 1x signal gotta love going to school in bama. I asked them to call me back next friday when i will be home since I have finals this week, I presume they will be calling me back in order to avoid anymore lawsuits like they have just recieved and get my contacts back but until friday next week I will not have a definite answer, but I must say that the fact that they will be able to access my old syncs makes me confident that they can restore my contacts if they can that will work wonders for me since my contacts in my old HTC Touch have been erased by my old Nemesis after checking to see if they were still on the phone.
I didn't have this problem with my update, but can understand how the person should be upset. On the other hand I use exchange which seems to backup my contacts rather well, and just in case I made a paper backup of my contact information if my phone got lost, stolen, broken, or if I bought a non-webos phone.
But then I don't have hundreds of contacts like some people, so a paper backup isn't that big of a deal.
Most People that are complaining about people being upset are ones that have
Oh my how I hate to see the BS lawsuits that come out of California and douche bags that didn't suffer any real injuries or contract breach. A waste of our judical system.
It like something a 5 year old says, "I am going to sue you for.."
I guess some people never grow up.
It acually sound like Sprint and Palm worked with the customer pretty well.
I now dislike Jason Standiford and believe he is probably a difficuly person to know.
I would venture to say more about Jason Standiford but he would probably sue me for slander. Whaaaaaaaaaa!
I would think that any business person that has any contacts would have them on a computer as well as their phone the only thing they might lose would be at most a couple of new contacts, which they did not have time to input into their computer. I have over 1060 contacts and do keep them in several places, you do know that even your computer can crash and all is gone. I see some peoples point about a desktop program from Palm but would that just give people one more thing to complain about? There is Google which is free. There are several that are not free. There are some that will do could and desktop to phone and back.
Glad to know i'm not the only experiencing issues with backup for my data! I just lost all my contacts, calendar info and memos the day before Thanksgiving and I received a call yesterday from Palm stating they might be able to retrieve all my data...wish me luck.
for those who are just posting remember this one teeny tiny thing:
THINGS ARE BUILT TO FAIL- thats part of the point behind products today
by the way, i should know about technology, i have a dual mechanical and electrical engineering degree, and also an automotive technician degree
Just to add a little to your point: Things are built to fail just outside the warranty. :)
Too many people forget that no service is perfect. Palm's current backup-to-the-cloud is subpar (and will certainly improve with time), but even were it perfect there would always be a small number of backup restoral failures.
Anyone who had an expectation that Palm's backup would be perfect (or even near perfect) was dreaming. This is precisely why so many of us are clamoring for Palm-provided or 3rd party provided equivalent to full desktop sync! If you back up to your desktop and then backup your desktop, that's three separate locations for your data. Counting Palm's backup, and that makes four. That's reasonable for important data.
For my previous Palm devices, I would take one full archive a month of my T|3 and throw it into another directory, just in case something got corrupted and I didn't notice until months later. I still have years of these monthly archives.
well put ekuns... but even then, these are the type of people to sue dell, or hp, or lenovo, or apple because their files to their favorite things were corrupted... im sure these people dont back up their family digital pics just once... why would you dare with an over the air method just to do it once? isnt the saying "measure twice cut once"?
I would like to point out by suing over something like this will not get the product fixed. Working for a large corporation I am familiar with lawsuits that get thrown towards companies. I can assure you Palm has already started working on the backup issues before this lawsuit was filed. By filing the lawsuit all that will happen is Palm's lawyers will change the End User Agreement and contracts to say they cannot be held liable for technology not working.
I think Jason is just wanting money in a down economy and anyone else that jumps onto this lawsuit is doing the same thing. It is COMMON sense to use one of the FREE 3rd party applications listed in numerous posts here on Precentral to backup your PalmDatabase.db3 file.
For those of you saying "Palm hasn't ran a backup in x days". This is because you have not downloaded, added contacts or accounts to your profile. The backup will only occur (to save bandwidth and space) if your data has changed.
So is this why my phone stopped doing its automatic daily backups 3 days ago?!!?