The Problem - Data Recovery Clients are Ignorant of Data Recovery Industry Practices, and the Industry Knows It
Let's face the facts about the situation most people are in when it comes to data recovery:
- It's usually an emergency, and someone's in trouble, and someone's job, marriage, division or business may be on the line.
- Most people who experience data loss and require the services of a data recovery lab have not kept up-to-date with industry developments, and do not know which companies are the good ones, and which companies are the bad ones. Quite often, clients will choose the first company that shows up in a Google search, send in their drive, and ask questions later. Using an independent reseller provides clients with the chance to discuss the success and failure rates of several companies based on real-world drives.
- It doesn't always matter which data recovery company is the oldest, because technicians can always quit and work for a newer company, or start their own data recovery company.
- In comparing data recovery companies, it often doesn't matter which one claims to be the cheapest, because even if the cost was $1, would you pay $1 for someone to ruin your drive and take away all the chances of getting any data from it? In addition, there is no sense in negotiating a price before there is also a guarantee that the data is recoverable at that price, because the company can always say that the data would not have been recoverable for the negotiated price, and then ask for what they really want.
- Every company will claim that it has a high success rate and low prices, if it can get away with it, because that's what customers want to hear. As long as clients go directly to data recovery labs, thinking they'll get a better deal, no third party will be able to keep track of which labs are getting good results, and which labs are getting poor results.
- Different companies are better at different types of recovery. But usually companies market themselves to handle every sort of problem with top-rate skills and success. Without direct and recent experience with the company in question, there is no way of knowing if the company's claims are backed up by the ability to deliver results.
- The hard drive or other device which requires recovery can often be ruined by incompetent handling. If the data recovery lab ruins a clients drive, however, there are usually no repercussions at all. The end client is fairly powerless in this situation. However, if the data recovery lab ruins a drive going through a reseller, it risks losing all repeat business from that reseller, and clients gain the advantage of the experience of previous clients by avoiding such firms.
"Quite often, clients will choose the first company that shows up in a Google search, send in their drive, and ask questions later."
A data recovery lab, or a company which performs its own data recovery services directly, essentially has only one type of product to sell: theirs. Even if they're not the best company for the client's job, they'll still try to get the hard drive in the door, get to payment, and get on to the next job. There is no question about whether they're the right company for the job - of course they are, because they got the call.
But being the first company to get called is actually a position of great responsibility - one which requires also a degree of independence. Sure, every company has a profit motive, and data recovery resellers are no exception. However, an independent reseller will approach the situation with a much more clinical 'triage' approach compared with a company that has its own data recovery labs. In contrast with an 'in-house' data recovery company, a reseller will be quite able and willing to drop and switch suppliers quickly if they do not prove to be successful.
And of course, success is defined in terms of the formula used by the reseller to attract new hard drive data recovery jobs, recover the data, and then close the deal with the client.
From the business side, the guide to running a successful resale business is simply pay as little as possible for the highest-quality data recovery possible that results in completed jobs that, once completed, would fit within the client's budget.
And here comes the familiar objection: If there's a middle-man, won't the data recovery cost that much more? And the short answer is no.
The "Middle-Man" Helps Clients Save Money, While Making a Profit
Of course resellers will pay less to the 'fulfilment centers' than they are charging their clients. But usually, if the clients went straight to the data recovery labs, they would end up paying the same price or even more (usually MUCH more). Why? The reason is that both resellers and data recovery labs have the same bargaining position with clients at the time of an emergency, whereas resellers negotiate better deals when there is no emergency by using the volume of business that they command as a powerful bargaining tool. This is why Transparen is quite often the largest 'partner' of data recovery labs in Canada. So many clients come to Transparen Data Recovery for their data recovery tasks that there is significant bargaining power for lower prices which the end-consumers do not typically possess.
At the same time, resellers such as Transparen Data Recovery add value by providing a service component that data recovery labs are not interested in providing. For instance:
- Pickup and drop-off of drives
- Absorbing all or part of the evaluation costs
- Levelling any shipping costs, so that local data recovery labs can be considered on an even playing field with labs that are further away
- Keeping score to see which recovery labs provide better success rates - the results are often quite different from those advertised on websites
- Hand-holding the clients and ensuring that packing is done properly and that the process is streamlined
- Being a trusted third party with potential liability and having a good reputation to lose, in case work is done below acceptable standards
- Communicating the price ranges and the associated wait times and risks of failure, where different price ranges are often provided by different suppliers
- Ensuring that suppliers perform their duties professionally and ethically, and punishing suppliers that perform shoddy work, charge too much compared with their success rate, or take too long to complete jobs
The "Client-Reseller" Relationship
Clients contract with Transparen just as they would with a typical data recovery lab, and Transparen takes care of the rest according to an established procedure. Through its partnerships, Transparen can provide emergency and quick turn-around service, and has negotiated with suppliers for faster turn-around and much better discounts than end-clients would obtain, and it is through discounts that the service is provided profitably. Through its experience as a reseller, and ongoing experience as more and more drives are sent to Transparen, clients are routed to the data recovery labs which best suit their needs, and which provide the appropriate level of service, but which have passed certain minimum qualifications, have good reputations in the industry, and which consistently provide the kinds of results that Transparen's clients demand.
Not For Everybody
Of course, a data recovery reseller is not always needed, especially in certain situations such as:
- if the data is not important
- if there is no budget to perform a professional data recovery
- if nothing bad will happen if the data recovery fails permanently
- if there is a recent backup that is sufficient for disaster recovery without requiring further data recovery (this is the best reason)
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