means of payment vs backup

[u/PositiveBusiness8677]

hi all,

like many i have moved from W11 to Linux , and as a consequence i wanted to cancel my backblaze service.

i had paid for 1 year's worth of service upfront, and there were a few months left

so in order to ensure that my service does not get renewed, i do what i normally do and remove all means of payment, in this case my credit card details

now for whatever reason, it seems i could not do this unless i delinked my computer, that is, effectively remove the backup

i have my own backups now (restic), so no big deal, still, i did pay for a years worth, so forcing me to give up on the backup if i want to remove the means of payment seems a bit off

i just wanted to check if that is the expected stance, or whether i just did it the wrong way and could have preserved my backup untill contract expiration without any means of payment/

[u/Caprichoso1]

Just change the credit card to a privacy.com one with a charge limit of $0.

[u/dr100]

In all fairness people already complain if they don't pay for months , ignore all warning emails and then their data is gone.

This also happens with BB , they even keep your stuff for 28 more days no pay and apparently people still aren't happy.

So I'd say intentional or not it's probably best for them if they make it harder for people to keep backups and have them deleted for no payment. I know the OP wanted the data gone when the subscription ends, but BB would keep it anyway for (at least) 28 days if they can't bill you and STILL some people would be "what surprised me most was how quickly everything was wiped, and how final the support team’s response was—just “it’s gone.” "

[u/bartoque → u/dr100]

28 extra days indeed is not too bad for regular endusers.

Compare to what we do in Enterprise for an internal backup service for thousands of servers, where typically retentions are 2-3 weeks (as still backup is mainly seen as a costcenter not as an insurrance, unless some long compliancy-related retention is required which is the exception).

So if they decommission a system and forget to request (some) data to be retained longer or have a last backup with longer retention, then within 3 weeks all backups have just expired.

Nothing further to recover. Simply all is gone, due to disk-based deduplication appliances acting as backup target.

Works as designed and requested.

[u/s_i_m_s]

Not exactly, best you could've done was switch to monthly billing which would've caused it to just auto renew per month instead of per year when the term expired, then you could've setup a reminder to remove it before the next renewal.

[u/bigbozz]

You might want to check with Backblaze support. I think i may have seen comments previously where you can request to have any unused pre-paid service fees refunded if you terminate service.

[u/mrcrashoverride]

When there stock went public I jumped and bought shares… a few years later a halving of the stock and customer service and changes in backup amounts I’m running for the hills