Does anyone use Dropbox for Business?

[HCHTech]

I have a 2-employee client that needs to send and receive large files. On his own, he purchased Dropbox for Business, and then called when he couldn't make it work. I have been dinking around with it for an hour now and I cannot get either folder sharing or file request to work. For the file request, it looks like it works, but I never receive the email with the request. If I copy a link and email it manually, I get the email, but the link says the "request was closed".

Edit: The error I get when trying to use the file request link is:

So it might be the account is flagged somehow. I'll have to contact support about that.


For the sharing, If I just share it, it looks like it works, but the sharing is never applied. If I try to create a link, I get an error message that I don't have permission to create links - all while logged in as the only user in existence for this account, who is global admin.

I've checked in the admin console and it doesn't look like sharing or file requests are prohibited (both of those toggles are off). I've tried this with both existing folders created by my client, and with a new folder created by me during the remote session.

Unless someone has a bright idea, I'm going to try and open a support ticket, but this shouldn't be necessary. If you want to sell your $&%^#@ product, it shouldn't be a fight to use, you know? Can someone steer me out of the woods here?

 

[thecomputerguy]

I have a 2-employee client that needs to send and receive large files. On his own, he purchased Dropbox for Business, and then called when he couldn't make it work. I have been dinking around with it for an hour now and I cannot get either folder sharing or file request to work. For the file request, it looks like it works, but I never receive the email with the request. If I copy a link and email it manually, I get the email, but the link says the "request was closed".

Edit: The error I get when trying to use the file request link is:
View attachment 13908
So it might be the account is flagged somehow. I'll have to contact support about that.


For the sharing, If I just share it, it looks like it works, but the sharing is never applied. If I try to create a link, I get an error message that I don't have permission to create links - all while logged in as the only user in existence for this account, who is global admin.

I've checked in the admin console and it doesn't look like sharing or file requests are prohibited (both of those toggles are off). I've tried this with both existing folders created by my client, and with a new folder created by me during the remote session.

Unless someone has a bright idea, I'm going to try and open a support ticket, but this shouldn't be necessary. If you want to sell your $&%^#@ product, it shouldn't be a fight to use, you know? Can someone steer me out of the woods here?

Dropbox support is actually decent. Sometimes they throw you into a "Level 2 Tech" without an ETA but as a dropbox business client (and by business I'm assuming Dropbox Teams) you get a priority code with a phone number.

If you aren't using "Dropbox Teams" which may just be branded as Dropbox business you should be.

 

[HCHTech]

It is Dropbox Teams, and they offered a live chat support, which I always prefer, since I don't have to work through an accent with my bad hearing. Unfortunately, clicking on the live chat icon took me immediately to the "call us" page, but I called, left a message for a callback, and heard back about 20 minutes later. The account had sharing "banned", although they couldn't tell me why. "Normally it is due to exceeding bandwidth limits", but a) they wouldn't tell me what those limits are, and b) since we never got it working, 0kb has to be less than whatever their limit is. So, they said they would submit a request to the engineers to unban the account - although that couldn't happen while they were still on the phone and I could actually test it. So I'm waiting now for an email confirmation of the "de-banning", so I can test it out for my client.

I give this support experience a 6 out of 10. Yes the found the problem, but they couldn't fix it immediately and they couldn't tell me how to avoid it in the future other than "don't exceed a limit that I won't disclose". Not exactly a warm and fuzzy feeling on that "fix".

Also, if your account has been banned for whatever reason, there should be a big-a$$ red banner across the page when you log in informing you of this fact, IMO. There was no such indication. So maybe 5 out of 10 in the final analysis.

 

[MudRock]

Not the first time I've heard of that. Client of mine didn't realize they could share a folder at a time, so instead just started sharing individual files at a time. Not long in, started getting errors. Her and I called them together, and they told us she was banned from sharing for "patterns of abuse of our service" and wouldn't talk about it any further. They also mentioned that she was now restricted to 2 devices as well. (She also couldn't access others' shared items either.)

Edit: Spreadsheets and Word docs mostly, sometimes proofs. Sent to a couple people here and there, nothing posted on the internet, only email or chat.

She had paid for a year. I got her moved into OneDrive and up and running with it (And saved her some cash too), and since Dropbox refused to refund or do anything, she called her CC and claimed "Service provided not as advertised" and "Fraud" and her CC provider did a chargeback. Dropbox tried harrassing her, but she just blocked the email address.

They, at that time, appeared not to waver on their internal unadvertised limits. Break one of those limits, the platform gets out the banhammer and that's it. No more sharing for you, but they are plenty content still taking your money.

Zero issues with OneDrive for her.

I have had tons of problems myself in the past. Just not worth the hassle when things go sour. I've deleted all my content and deleted my account, and to this day I get daily "So-and-so has accessed (some file/folder)" and similar notifications... The person's name I have no idea, nor the folder/files they're accessing. Can't log in, can't "Forgot my password" -- Account isn't there anymore. They claim it is impossible to keep getting these notifications... They claim it is someone who tried to share a folder with me, but it should be impossible to get those notifications with a cancelled account.

 

[sapphirescales]

I've tried Dropbox for Business. I ran into traffic/bandwidth limits only 20 minutes into uploading a bunch of files. I immediately canceled. Reminds me of the one time I also tried Hostinger's "VPS" server to host a few websites. The whole thing crashed 5 minutes into a full website backup I was doing. I used their live chat feature (for which I as on hold for over 30 minutes) and they told me I had hit a throttling limit of some kind. I was like, "seriously, this is a VPS!" to which they replied "well actually...BS, BS, BS reason why you're limited." I canceled them too.

It's 2022. There shouldn't be bandwidth/traffic limits on a $20+/month service when bandwidth is so cheap nowadays. Netflix allows huge amounts of data through their servers for like $12/month. There's no reason why cloud backup and higher end hosting environments shouldn't do the same. $3/month shared hosting? Sure, I expect that to suck. $50/month VPS or $30/month cloud backup? That should be extremely fast without artificial bandwidth limits.

Use Google Drive. They have limits too, but they're ridiculously high. I remember downloading about 2.5TB in a day from Google Drive and getting a warning that they wouldn't allow me to download anything else for 24 hours, but that's fair. This was like a $5/month service at the time (back in like 2015 or something).

 

[callthatgirl]

I still find most of my clients with Dropbox using their personal one and sharing every single file in the company from their own account. No lie.

 

[britechguy]

Also, if your account has been banned for whatever reason, there should be a big-a$$ red banner across the page when you log in informing you of this fact, IMO.

There should also be something that tells you why, and in no uncertain terms. This crap of "banning for unknown reasons" should be illegal. If you've violated some term(s) in the terms of service those should be enumerated.

And none other than Microsoft pulls the "permanently disabled/blocked" with zero explanation, too. That should be a crime (and particularly when payment is involved, but not only then).

 

[HCHTech]

sharing every single file in the company from their own account.

Right? I wish folks would just ASK once in a while "how could I best do this job" instead of going out, purchasing something and then calling when it doesn't work like they want!

I think he's also got Google Drive, and I've shared files easily with that before, but I don't know, frankly, whether you can request a file from a non-google person. I should try that...

This crap of "banning for unknown reasons" should be illegal. If you've violated some term(s) in the terms of service those should be enumerated.

Indeed. "You've broken a rule, we're not going to tell you which one, so good luck avoiding that in the future!"

 

[callthatgirl]

Most unmanaged clients are DYI techs, so they just do it until it breaks and they can't google it to figure it out, so they call us and expect us to know every little issue quickly lol. Sometimes I move these folks to Teams, and that turns into revenue for me.