back to article Currys PC World rapped after Knowhow Cloud ad ruled to be 'misleading'

Currys PC World has been ordered not to "exaggerate the capability" of its Knowhow Cloud backup after an aggrieved UK buyer found out the hard way that he had to restore each individual file one by one. The misleading advert on currys.co.uk was banned by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority after it ruled that "the …

  1. tiggity Silver badge

    Lawyered up

    The aggrieved individual would be better off lawyering up (Currys / PCW deserve it for blatant mis-selling if restore is a massive PITA), ASA is the definition of toothless

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lawyered up

      Your 100% wrong here.. Until recently I worked with-in the Group's IT, the thing that the company is most paranoid about is brand and reputation damage (Exactly the sort of thing this article is causing).

      Saying that, we all know this is marketing hype, and anybody who works in that department is full of shit anyway..

      1. Mage Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: paranoid about is brand and reputation damage

        But not actually real customer support, honestly advertised products, decent products, mis-selling and pressuring people to buy useless or incorrectly described services.

        Even AFTER Irish Analogue Switch off in Ireland, every Currys/Dixons/PCWorld STILL had NO MPEG4 TVs, all MPEG2 only tuners (Ireland is MPEG4 for SD and doesn't need DVB-T2 even for HD).

        No mention on DAB sets that most transmitters are RTE only and the few with extra services are DAB+. Or that the service is only 43% geographic coverage.

        Pointless insurance (like Argos) and attempt to ignore 2 year SOGA warranty (like Argos).

        Gas Cookers with Metric fitting (Water & Gas here is Imperial).

        I don't know what Currys is like in UK. Here they are really bad. Tesco, Argos and others are similar. Unfortunately Irish consumer protection enforcement is rubbish and Advertising Standards only cares about a "level playing field" not lies to consumer. They only take seller's explanation and don't seek 3rd party experts.

      2. Lotaresco

        Re: Lawyered up

        "thing that the company is most paranoid about is brand and reputation damage"

        Err they do know that have an entirely shit brand and reputation, don't they? Customer service at Currys/PCW is, always has been and will probably continue to be shit. That's what their reputation is and their "brand" is recognised as a warning that they are to be used only for "distress purchases".

        My experience, bought a TV from them because it was one day faster to get it from Currys rather than get it from Amazon and although more expensive at Currys, not that much more expensive. Opened the box and screen was damaged. Returned to Currys for the most awful support experience, ever. Firstly a one hour wait to get anyone to look at the TV. Then another hour of being accused of damaging it myself. Then another hour as they refused to honour their SOGA responsibilities followed by them refusing to replace it unless the manufacturer agreed to pay the costs. Ignorant staff claimed that this was essential. It isn't. Eventually replaced only when the manufacturer agreed to indemnify Currys.

        Shameful, awful and the default standard for customer "service" at Currys. You even have to wait to pay for goods because the tills are not manned. And then when somebody appears they try to sell you shit you don't want and turn business purchases into a nightmare.

        1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
          Flame

          Re: Lawyered up

          My recent experience... needed a new fridge/freezer.

          Checked out online, but wanted to actually see the things before buying, so figured that Currys was a convenient place and that I'd then be able to pick it up and take it home that day.

          Got in store, saw what I wanted, measured up and everything. But couldn't find anyone to check stock or take my money. Walked out, sat in car and ordered online for next day delivery.

          Arrived as promised the next day... dented by their warehouse crew, so had to wait another day. I told them I wouldn't be around in the morning "no problem, we'll be there around 2pm"... they arrived at 10am and funnily enough I wasn't there to receive it.

          So yeah, they're pretty shit

          1. Annihilator

            Re: Lawyered up

            "Arrived as promised the next day... dented by their warehouse crew"

            Strange promise they made... XD

            Having said that, had exactly the same experience, from lack of staff, to ordering online myself, culminating in the large dent.

            Topped off by delivery bods saying that it would be quicker if I kept the dented one, as that would allow a replacement to arrive the next day. Turns out to be bollocks and they just couldn't be arsed to take it back to the lorry.

        2. K

          @Lotaresco

          "Err they do know that have an entirely shit brand and reputation"

          Personally I agree, but enough shoppers obviously still trust them, as they've just reported bumper sales.

    2. richslater

      Re: Lawyered up

      I'm the aggrieved individual!! Just as aggrieved at the ASA to be fair, the ransomware attack hit last August and I submitted the claim to ASA in December. I honestly think they really only prioritised it after the NHS WannaCry attack.

      But he ho, got there in the end. And yes, next stop is court... our business suffered huge financial consequences from this and we will seek to recover losses.

      1. Ian 55

        Re: Lawyered up

        So the problem was that you could retrieve the files, but only one by one rather than saying 'give me the lot, now'?

        Why didn't you try restoring files earlier?

  2. not_my_real_name

    They also blamed the customer

    for using a currys pcworld product in the first place

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: They also blamed the customer

      That was quite incredible really, to blame the customer.

      It's times like that when you can see what being the only real retailer on the high street can do to a company's mindset. They've no competition on the high street, ergo, fuck you pay me.

  3. adam payne

    First mistake: going anywhere near PC World.

    Second mistake: trusting what the people at PC World told you.

  4. DrXym

    As a rule of thumb

    Any company bragging that their service is "military grade" without going into technically credible specifics is selling snake oil.

    1. Phil W

      Re: As a rule of thumb

      Military Grade Snake Oil?

      For Military Grade Snakes?

      The whole "Military Grade" marketing thing is annoying anyway. Because as a headline it's meaningless, for a start whose military are you talking about? If it's one of the big ones like USA, UK, Canada or whatever then they'll certainly have various named/numbered standards for things, such as hardware components and software compliance, but rather crucially those standards won't be uniform (no pun intended) across those countries.

      Plus it could be referring to the military of for instance the Central African Republic, who I seriously doubt have any defined standards for computer hardware or software.

    2. macjules

      Re: As a rule of thumb

      There is no such thing as 'military grade' it is purely a marketing term used to imply that something is, "strong, tough, intense and high-quality", certainly nothing I would categorise Curry's as.

      BTW for non-UK/Eire commenters, 'Currys' is not a food shop or an Indian restaurant: you get better service in those places.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: As a rule of thumb

        When out on operations, "Military Grade" could, on occasion, refer to "kept in a tent somewhere"

      2. The Indomitable Gall

        Re: As a rule of thumb

        " BTW for non-UK/Eire commenters, 'Currys' is not a food shop or an Indian restaurant: you get better service in those places. "

        ...not to mention better IT.

      3. quxinot

        Re: As a rule of thumb

        Wait a moment, please.

        Military grade.

        The military, as seen by most western taxpayers (and possibly others, but I gotta go with what I know here...) is a laughably inefficent pile of made-up terminology to describe overpriced and underperforming hardware. This is not a selling point in my household.

        Am I wrong?

        1. Captain DaFt

          Re: As a rule of thumb

          Ask any member of the military that has to use "Military grade" equipment, and they'll tell you that it means "20 years old tech".

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Trollface

          Re: As a rule of thumb

          Combine this post, with the first reply - and I think that CurrysPCWorld actually DO qualify as "Military Grade".

          Overpriced?? Check !!

          Poor Reliability? Check !!

          Outdated technology?? Check !!

          Terrible data systems?? Check !!

          Incompetent leadership at all levels?? Check, check and CHECK!!!!

    3. 's water music
      Coat

      Re: As a rule of thumb

      Any company bragging that their service is "military grade" without going into technically credible specifics is selling snake oil.

      I used to think that before I worked peripherally to defense procurement and realised that late delivery, massive overpricing and barely functional products is what 'mil spec' is all about.

      The camo one please-->

  5. Sam Therapy

    Shower of lying bastards and it's not the first time they've been slapped for making false claims.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well...

    They could argue:

    1) You can access your files from anywhere in the world*;

    2) Your data is safe.

    It says nowhere that it is easy to restore :-(

    * This may not be true is some regions.

  7. Lotaresco
    Facepalm

    There's another dodgy claim there

    "All your data is protected and backed up in our military grade encrypted UK based data centres."

    This cannot be true. Military grade encryption is not made available to anyone outside government or suppliers to government. Disk drives are available that support military grade encryption, again only available to government or government sponsored customers, they would be too slow and way too expensive to use in a data centre. Although there's considerable doubt about what they are claiming is encrypted (ie FDE or just the transmission of data) the claim about "military grade" isn't capable of misinterpretation.

    1. SteveK

      Re: There's another dodgy claim there

      Maybe their 'military grade UK data centres' are in Cheltenham...

    2. Anonymous Coward Silver badge

      Re: There's another dodgy claim there

      Which military?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: There's another dodgy claim there

      "Military grade encryption" just means out of date.

      Because of bureaucracy they're still using 3DES / RC4 / MD5, and anything more modern hasn't been approved.

      1. Lotaresco

        Re: There's another dodgy claim there

        "'Military grade encryption' just means out of date. Because of bureaucracy they're still using 3DES / RC4 / MD5, and anything more modern hasn't been approved."

        You do know this is drivel, don't you? Unless you are talking about the military of Christmas Island, possibly.

  8. Halfmad

    What about this?

    "All your data is protected and backed up in our military grade encrypted UK based data centres"

    Are they actually owned by the company? Otherwise this simply isn't true. More likely this would be appropriate: "All your data is protected and backed up in the military grade encrypted UK based data centres which we rent rack space in."

  9. andy 103
    WTF?

    At Currys/PC World...We start with..bullshit

    Curry's don't even have the required skills to sell a toaster.

    Why would you trust them with cloud storage (or indeed anything to do with your data)?

    If anything, it just goes to back up (no pun intended) that these people know precisely jack shit about what they are selling.

  10. Chris G

    Military Grade

    Perhaps they mean the data centres have been designed by BAE, they are several years late, unfit for purpose and the final (much higher) cost is yet to be determined.

  11. Martin 63

    History

    My Granddad had an 'infected' iThing. Midweek the conversation went roughly as follows:

    "Are you sitting in front of the machine?"

    "Yep"

    "Shut it down, close the lid and Ill look at it at the weekend".

    1 day later, I get a call asking where all his files have gone. PCW had hit the reset option on the Airbook

  12. Marc 13

    Know How Cloud back up is a white label version of Live Drive*

    Restoration of folders from the client app (WinTel) is straight forward: Reinstall Win (assuming its a DR situation), download/install LD client app (2 mins) and sign in. Click restore, choose the folder to restore and where to put it and let it cook...

    Did this last week for a mate.

    The real issue is that the LD client is a bit hit and miss at putting the data IN the cloud...

    ...and not very vocal about the miss parts. We discovered this when my mate's data showed up with bits from Dec last year included, rather than the week before last. (It was a migration, not a DR so easy to sort). But the logs showed the LD client had been diligently running delta uploads every hour for weeks, yet there were clear sections missing!

    *This I discovered when a mate had tried LD and then bought (been fobbed off with) KHC at the till... tried to register and couldn't ... the reason? His email address (used as username) was already in use o the LD client app, so the KHC branded version thought he was already registered (which I guess he was)

    M

  13. WolfFan Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Curry's PC World idiocy

    Last month I received an email in one of my other accounts. This was, allegedly, an invoice from a Curry's somewhere in the UK. According to the invoice, I owed a fairly substantial sum, dating from December last year. I contacted their customer nonservice after going to http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/contact-us-1181-theme.html and they confirmed that this was a genuine invoice, not some kind of scam. If I did not pay up 'action would be taken'. I pointed out that

    1 I had not been in the UK in more than 20 years

    2 I had never been within 50 miles of the alleged store where I allegedly ran up this debt

    3 I am not currently in the UK

    4 Curry's can fuck right off.

    The customer nonservice drone countered that their records said different, that I had in fact been to the location in question and had in fact received the goods in question and that they did in fact have an address for me in the UK and that 'action would be taken'.

    I wondered exactly how I was allowed to walk out of their premises carrying the goods in question, and told 'em to go right ahead and proceed to the address they had. I then hung up.

    Sometime after that I got a call on my Magic Jack account, the service I'd used to call them (2.2 cents/minute to the UK) allegedly from someone in their legal department. He started to try to 'advise' me of my 'position'. I asked him to check to see what number he'd called. I then asked him if he really thought that threatening me was going to have the least effect. I repeated that I had not been in the UK for decades, and that I could prove it quite easily. I also asked how going to the address they allegedly had for me in the UK had gone. I further advised him that this call was being recorded, and that I would take legal action against Curry's, and personally against any agent of Curry's who continued the groundless harassment. I repeated that it simply was not possible that I had been in the UK on the date in question, at that time I was in Regina, Saskatchewan. (Given the temperature in Saskatchewan in December, I'd have rather been in the UK, but I wasn't... and I have the Canadian entry-exit stamps in my passport to prove it.) I then hung up. I have not yet received anything further from Curry's.

    It would appear that someone at Curry's got taken in a fairly big way and whoever did the taking put my email address onto the form or whatever the hell it was, I don't know and I don't care, it's not my problem and any attempt to make it my problem will be met with extreme hostility. It also appears that Curry's notes the phone numbers of all who call customer nonservice. And it further appears that the alleged legal department (really some twit in sales pretending to be calling from the legal department, I have no doubt) is brain-dead.

    I quite believe that Curry's is capable of anything, so long as it's stupid.

    1. Nolveys

      Re: Curry's PC World idiocy

      I was in Regina, Saskatchewan...in December

      Is it true that most people who spend December in Regina freeze to death and are replaced in the spring?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They also blamed the customer, suggesting that getting caught in a ransomware attack was his own fault for having "inadequate virus protection", in the words of the ASA.

    Priceless

    Of course they should have taken advantage of Curry's very reasonable offer of Norton's Mcafee LiveUnSafe that they seem to shove at you, even if you just want to buy a stamp, for the lowly price of your first born.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Buyer Beware

    You have to realize that they deal in quantity not quality.

    There are other places to shop, and get extended cover for free.

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: Buyer Beware

      Yes, Curry's is a place to go for a basic, standard item. One that you can't get delivered from an online seller for whatever reason. They know nothing and care less. They shift boxes. Go there to buy a box*, by all means, but don't expect any help.

      *Be careful though. Make sure it's what you think you're buying and not a version of it. The first time I met this was some 40 odd years ago. I was bought a replacement for a camera that had been damaged. It came from Dixons. It looked like the original one. Even the lettering on it was the same. But it wasn't really the same, it was their version- and it was shit. They'd taken the design and downgraded every component, so that it didn't f**king actually work. The metal wheels that moved the film (remember that) on had been replaced with plastic ones that slipped, so the film wouldn't move. It had no chance of ever working. And they must have known that. I've never seen anything since to make me think they've improved any.

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: Buyer Beware @Terry 6

        I've heard this story before, but I can't quite believe it.

        I think that you ought to be a little careful. It is not unknown for a manufacturer to 'refine' a model over time, either to improve it, or to reduce manufacturing costs. If there had been some time between you buying the first item, and then buying the second from Dixons, it may have been the manufacturer themselves that had made the change, not a Dixons reduced spec. model.

        Although you might expect it, you may find that the model number does not change when this happens. I can point to many items where products change over time. For example, in a not dissimilar time-frame, if you had bough a BBC model B microcomputer, you might find considerable difference from an early one bought in 1982 with an issue 3 motherboard, and one bought in 1985 with an issue 7 motherboard, a different power supply, different memory, keyboard, and even the case. In that case, it was the range of serial numbers that could tell you the complete specification.

        The same is true for cars, where chassis or engine serial number may be required to identify the exact set of parts for the same model bought at different times.

        Manufacturers often cover themselves in the documentation for a product with something like "details and specifications may change over time".

        If it was a case of a reduced specification model being sold as if it was the full one, that is either deception or fraud, and is illegal in the UK, and was probably illegal 40 years ago.

        Of course, if it really did not work within a year of purchasing it, you took it back for repair or replacement under the standard guarantee, didn't you?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Buyer Beware @Terry 6

          Actually, what Terry is suggesting HAS been done to UK (and probably world) customers in recent years.

          A "famous name", supposedly reputable tech company released a tablet that got rave reviews from its customers and reviewers for about 6 months, then a steady stream of poor reviews.

          Why??

          Because a few months after releasing the product, they started fitting a shite quality camera ccd, lower quality RAM and touch screen, and (I suspect) reduced the battery capacity by 10% - all with the exact same model number and price tag.

          I wont name the firm, as I suspect they were badged OEM devices, so perhaps not entirely their fault.

          Not the first time this has happened, years ago Arctic Cooling had to withdraw stocks of their "Arctic Silver thermal compound after it was found to contain no silver - they got scammed by the 3rd party making the stuff for them.

          Renault also got scammed by the company making batteries for their first gen electric cars - after the first successful delivery and test of the batteries, the bulk order version were full of sand.

          1. Terry 6 Silver badge

            Re: Buyer Beware @Terry 6

            " wont name the firm, as I suspect they were badged OEM devices, so perhaps not entirely their fault."

            Problem with that claim is that as I understand it large companies have tight contracts that specify to a hair what goes into the product, and people to check it. Clearly it can happen, as with Alan Sugar and his dodgy disc drives.. Though even that wasn't a case of the OEM secretly changing a spec mid-contract.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    File by file

    To clarify the point made in the article - the cloud software scans the backup locations every hour for any new or changed files. If the ransomware has encrypted files, their checksum has changed and they get uploaded to the cloud.

    So your backups are now backups of the encrypted ransomed files. You can restore the files easily but they're encrypted. However, the cloud helpfully stores previous iterations of those files and you can re-download the previous versions.

    As the article indicates, downloading a previous version is file by file. Given that the circumstances are rather specific (a ransomware attack) cloud backup isn't intended to suit specific methods of attack, and if it was, I am sure ransomware would gradually adapt to encrypt files multiple times to create multiple iterations, and/or alter files on a more gradual basis so that users are not aware they have been infected until it is too late.

    As for those of you knocking and questioning "military grade encryption", a quick google states: "Military grade encryption refers to what's called AES-256 encryption."

    It further highlights that Knowhow Cloud is by no means alone in making this statement - other UK cloud providers such as Mozy (as per the first page of search results) make this claim, and further reference it as "military grade security", and declare that this "security" is "how to withstand the scariest of disasters."

  17. richslater

    I am the person who made this complaint to the ASA. It was a lot of time and work to make, chase and finally have the ASA Chair Committee rule on it.

    I wanted to do this for three reasons:

    1. To help ensure other people were not mis-sold this product, which as far as I'm concerned actually offers no security or useful backup/restore capability.

    2. To hopefully warn existing customers, inflict some level of brand damage, and hope it forces Currys to improve the product (to give some sort of bulk "rollback/restore" functionality.

    3. In the hope that a positive ruling would assist a later court case to recover costs and losses.

    I hadn't thought too much about gaining wider publicity but actually I think this is extremely important. I want as many people as possible to understand that Knowhow Cloud (and maybe others) do not really protect their data.

    If anyone here is in a position to assist with that it would be great to discuss further!

    Richard

    1. Ian 55

      Seen the 'file by file' comment above? Any thoughts?

  18. jianhawkjh

    I personally ordered my electronics from Curry and had a great experince.

    But I faced some issues while payment and got stuck, thankfully the Curry customer

    service is too polite and nice as they helped in resolving my issue.

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