Fox 11 News in LA went undercover with an intentionally damaged hard drive to find out whether online complaints about Data Recovery Corp, Inc. were true. Can you guess what the result was?

For those who can’t watch the video, the hard drive was pre-tested by another company and deliberately messed up with what Fox called a “minor software problem.” Then they dropped it off at Data Recovery Corp and paid $100 for a diagnostic review of the drive. Later, they received an email that said the drive had suffered a logical failure due to ELECTRICAL SEVERANCE. Data Recovery said it would cost $1490 to repair the drive.

Fox brought the email to their expert, who read the email and said, “That’s gibberish. That doesn’t even make sense. They’re basically adding words to make it sound technical.” That’s how you write a solid teleplay for a Star Trek episode, but not a good way to service customers, obviously.

Fox then went back to Data Recovery Corp and asked them to explain those terms. The guy at Data Recovery said he didn’t know.

The Fox expert said it would cost about $350 for him to retrieve the data.

“Data Recovery Scam – FOX 11 News Investigation” [YouTube] (Thanks to Jon!)

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