Do I have a small claims case against store that did not back-up my computer files as promised?
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Do I have a small claims case against store that did not back-up my computer files as promised?
I’m thinking of taking a store to small claims court. I had to sign a waiver against loss of data and I paid for a back-up but they never backed-up. They then lost financial data that has taken me over 12 hours so far to re-enter. This is in addition to 3 1/2 years of personal photos that are lost forever. They refunded me the back-up fee and have offered to refund the fee for reinstalling the operating system. Aside from everything else, I need to re-enter the data for this year in order to produce reports for income tax purposes.
Asked on November 21, 2011 under Business Law, New York
Answers:
FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 13 years ago | Contributor
If the store that you paid to have a back-up of your computer system did not do what it was supposed to do and you ended up losing a bunch of your data, you seem to have a basis for bringing a small claims court action against the vendor seeking the costs of the paid back-up.
The problem is the time that you are spending in inputting the data back into the computer may not be subject to compensation for the simple reason that you are incurring it yourself and not paying someone else to input it for you.
I would first send a written demand for compensation to the vendor with payment by a certain date and if not paid by then, file your small claims court action.
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