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IPDRA
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UPDATE
Since this was first posted the founder of IPDRA and its committee members have asked Andy Butler of abc Data Recovery to be a Fellow of IPDRA in recognition of his contribution to helping expose the conmen and rogues in the Fields of Data Recovery who have defrauded hundreds of consumers and undermined their competitors using the monies gained from selling fake data recovery reports.
Sadly Andy Butler was injured and hospitalised when Fields Group process server assaulted him and he sustained head and neck injuries. It is no coincidence that Fields also operate Injunction Direct and hundreds of other document spooling services. "Sector domination through unrelenting growth" is only achieved by governement grants and defrauding consumers.
Many data recovery companies have been put out of business trying to compete with these conmen... Do your research into the Fields Group and support reputable data recovery companies who have helped the victims of the "data recovery scam" - High Court Ruling regarding www.data-recovery-blog.co.uk and www.data-recovery-blog.com will help all those affected appreciate the effort of those reputable data recovery technicians and support staff who tried to help the victims.
It still needs data recovery technicians, partners, resellers as well as consumers to be aware of the data recovery papermil scams and protect themselves from fraud and risk. |
As a prospective member of The IPDRA I would like to know the purpose and accountability of The IPDRA and how it conducts its business.
Since the exposing a number of data recovery scams in the data recovery industry it has been good to see The IPDRA has also been drawing attention to the problem.
However we do need to be sure that this "Association " is going to investigate a consumers complaints and investigate its members if they are found to be part of similar sharp pracitcice, I for one have asked for the last 2 years for a number of concerns to be addressed and recently posted these questions after catching IPDRA members committing click fraud and undercutting our prices by £50 only to then charge an extra £1000 (Total £1250+vat) on recovery which had a fixed price of £299+vat.
If IPDRA is to give a seal of approval to members, The IPDRA committee itself should be accountable, they must be aware of what some of its UK members have been up to.
Here are the questions I would like answered.
1. Who is Ultimately financially responsible for running costs of The IPDRA.
2. Who is responsible for moderating the IPDRA forum.
3. Who makes the decision to grant membership and the seal of approval to an IPDRA applicant.
4. What is the registered address of The IPDRA
5. Are members secure premises checked, it is unclear which members work from their private residence and those which have secure commercial premises.
6. What action would IPDRA take if a member was proven to charge for work not undertaken.
7. What action would IPDRA take if a member was proven to be involved in PPC Fraud ?
8. Where is the official office address of The IPDRA
9. Who are the current elected committee members of The IPDRA
10. How was the selection process for the committee carried out.
11. On what date was The IPDRA formed and who were the founders.
12. Does The IPDRA have any legal standing ? If yes please clarify.
13. Who collects and banks the advertising fees taken by The IPDRA - how is the money accounted and used ?.
14. Does IPDRA have a code of practice for its members ?
15. Do IPDRA committee members vote on membership decisions?
16. How frequent are committee meetings ? when was the last one held and are the minutes available to non committee members?
17. What action will IPDRA take if it is shown that a member undercuts a competitor by £50 and then charges an additional £1000 for a job which would cost no more than £299+vat
18. On what grounds has membership been refused in the past.
19. Does IPDRA have public / professional indemnity insurance in order to provide a seal of approval to its membership.
20. Are the clean room claims by members checked and do they submit their annual re certification for inclusion on the IPDRA website.
21. On what grounds would membership be withdrawn and has any IPDRA member had its membership terminated.
Simon
What I want to establish is the purpose and legitimacy of The IPDRA so it can be seen to be carrying out what I believe is your intent - "to promote good data recovery companies". Your financing IPDRA is one thing if you can afford it ?
Its been run 'voluntarily' for over 3 years now. It gets along. Dont get me wrong, charging £500 per company per year would be great, but its not realistic for most that will benefit from being members.
I still say it should be properly financed and regular committee meetings and have a better way of vetting those that are making claims about their businesses that cannot be verified.
OK, but until we get enough revenue to fly all across the world and visit these companies, then we cannot realistically consider it.
What do you suggest is a better way of verifying people for membership?
Lets say that when we hit a certain figure of members, we start charging then? What amount of companies/individuals would you suggest?
So far in 3 years I can see no evidence of IPDRA achieving any changes to the state of the industry, nor any legal actions against the rogues who are creating more work and cost to genuine labs like ours.
Its not here for non-members. Its here for members. If you have a problem with a company, contact the relevant authorities, not the IPDRA. Its not for non-members.
Can you show examples of how IPDRA has helped the industry ?.
It helps clients choose a company that they have a third party comeback with. To date, only a single complaint has come through to us, it was investigated and found to not be a fault of the member. I think that this has helped the industry.
As to people not wanting to show their labs for security reasons, I find that to be part of the problem, we have too many rogue operations who claim to have clean room facilities yet don't. Either they can show their facilities exist or they should not claim to have them. When competitors were making claims about my lab I put my clean room certificate online and pictures of my lab.
I agree that they should not claim things that they dont have. You have a hell of a bee in your bonnet about your clean room? Just because you feel the need to promote this, it doesnt mean that everyone does, (take Disklabs as an example - you insinuated that we hadnt got one - until I posted the last years certificates).
I agree you don't have to give away the latest pictures but when a data recovery company claims a class 100 clean room surely it should be able to show its annual testing certificate and a picture.
Fair enough - but what can I do about it? Anyone can cut and paste a picture of a clean cabinet/room and say its theirs?
IPDRA has now been in existence for 3 years please state when it will be incorporated and start charging membership fees and vetting its members properly.
It will when the committee members decide it should.
With so many members you should be able to raise enough annual revenues to pay for an administrator to check the credentials of members and represent the industry in upcoming reviews of legislation and international standards.
How exactly should the administrator check facilities, security, software, hardware, clean facilities, spare parts etc - without charging a lot for it?
Can you clearly state what are the objectives of IPDRA and why companies like mine should join and contribute to its development ?.
You should join only if a. you qualify and b. if you want to show the public that you are of a technical standard c. you think it will be worth your time.
Why join? its a growing community. Power is in the membership.
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11-10-2010, 01:16 AM |  | Administrator | | Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 16 |
| Many Thanks
Simon
Thankyou for removing the posts that were put up in my name by those who are in the employ of what I have to descibe as conmen.
I can now see you and the committee are being fair and impartial.
That is all I have wanted to establish.
All reputable data recovery technicians, services and labs as well as their resellers of data recovery services are at risk of being damaged by the rogues, especially if they are not aware of how they operate.
If it were just a case of a mistake or poor customer service I would not have engaged with the Rogues, in reality it is damaging to our staff and businesses having to deal with the resulting mess these con artists create and puts us all under unnecessary pressure.
I am not the only company put to expense and inconvenience because of how they operate.
I appreciate the committee voting on my becoming a Fellow and Committee member and recognse why I have put my time and resources into exposing the rogues which are doing more damage to the DR Industry than anyone had realised (myself included).
They (Fields Data Recovery) realised I was their main competitor and spread lies about my company because we were expanding and increasing market share.
We noticed unusual damage to far too many drives for it to be a coincidence, despite my warning their head technician they had a problem, I was treated as hostile, my point was they were not allowing others the chance to recover the drives they could not do.
They decided they would try to put me out of business, thats why I went on the offensive, at least we get chance to recover the drives their 10 page reports claim are unrecoverable now.
The difficulty has been trying to find out who else was linked to them, and who else operates in the same way.
They tried to put me out of business using www.comparedatarecovery.co.uk and then attempted to bribe me into being quiet when I figured out how they were linked .
My rants are in my own name, but as was shown last week they also post in my name and in my companies name and I have had to fight fire with fire.
They are definitely experts but it is not in Data Recovery - they are expert in misinformation, e-warfare, divorce, tribunals, wills, and forensic reports basically anything they can do to get money for for a report ( Papermill *), but most of all they believe they can scare the "little man" into submission, well I can assure you this little man does not scare easily.
Their Director and Managing Director would have you believe their "corporate might" , "sector domination" , accreditiations and being the most respected forensic investigators in the UK somehow gives them the right to destroy their competition even though they make so many mistakes every week it is clear their QA ISO 9001 systems ammount to nothing.
Let me know how I can help the committee and membership of IPDRA to protect itself from infiltration by the rogues.
Regards
Andy Butler
abc Data Recovery Ltd
* Article on Data Recovery Papermill scams |
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