Terms and conditions

These terms apply when we diagnose, recover or destroy data for you. They are written to be read, because the important parts are the ones people usually find out about too late: that recovery can fail, and that trying can sometimes make a device worse.

1. Who you are contracting with

Datraction is a trading name of EVOLFE LIMITED, registered in England and Wales, company number 12142547, registered office 86 South Norwood Hill, London, England, SE25 6AQ. In these terms "we" and "us" mean that company. The lab is at 136 Kingston Road, London SW19 1LY.

2. How the contract is formed

An estimate given over the phone or through the website is a guide, not an offer. The contract forms when you accept our written price or agreed price range after diagnosis. Until you accept it, you owe us nothing and you can ask for the device back, except where you have separately authorised the enhanced assessment described below.

3. Standard diagnosis and previous intervention

Standard diagnosis is free. After examining the device we tell you what is wrong, what we believe is recoverable and what it is expected to cost. If the exact procedure or time cannot yet be known, we give you an agreed range instead. If you decide not to go ahead there is no recovery charge, and we return the device.

If a device has been opened, dismantled or physically worked on elsewhere, we charge an enhanced assessment fee of £100, payable before that assessment begins. The same fee may apply where another recovery attempt has materially increased the assessment work. We tell you when it applies and why before starting. It becomes non-refundable once the enhanced assessment begins because it pays for additional inspection, verification and any necessary decontamination already performed. If you cancel before that work begins, we refund it.

4. No recovery, no fee — and what that covers

If we accept a job and recover nothing, you pay nothing for the recovery work.

Recovery is rarely all-or-nothing. Where a drive is badly damaged we may return most of your data rather than all of it. We will tell you what we have before you pay, and you decide whether it is worth having. If the answer is no, there is nothing to pay.

The guarantee covers recovery. It does not extend to data migration or data destruction work, which is charged for the work done. It also does not refund an enhanced assessment that has already been completed under section 3, because that is a separate service rather than a recovery fee.

5. What you are telling us when you send a device

• That the device and the data on it are yours, or that you are authorised to instruct us.
• That recovering the data does not break a court order, a licence or anyone else's rights.
• That you have told us anything that affects safety or handling — a swollen battery, liquid ingress, or a previous recovery attempt by someone else.

A previous attempt matters more than people expect. A drive that has already been opened, or that recovery software has been run against, is materially harder to recover and sometimes impossible. Tell us; it changes what we do first.

6. The risk we cannot remove

Data recovery on physically damaged media is invasive by nature. Opening a drive, transplanting a head assembly or removing a chip carries a real possibility that the device ends up in a worse state than it arrived, including permanently unreadable.

We take that seriously, which is why the device is imaged before anything is written to it wherever imaging is possible, and why mechanical work happens in a cleanroom. But by asking us to attempt recovery you accept that a failed attempt can be final.

Please keep any working copy you have. We are not a substitute for a backup and we cannot restore what was never on the device.

7. Prices and speed

Quoted prices are in pounds sterling, include VAT and are the total price payable. Nothing is added to a displayed price or an accepted quotation.

Standard service is the base price. Express adds 40% and Emergency adds 70%, because both move your device ahead of the queue and extend the hours worked on it.

A written price is fixed once you accept it. Where we have agreed a range, the work remains within that range. If we find something during recovery that changes the work materially or would exceed the agreed limit, we stop and come back to you before proceeding. We never carry out chargeable work you have not agreed to.

For selected cases, we may require an advance payment of 50% of the accepted quotation before recovery begins. The quotation states this prominently. The payment is credited in full against the final invoice. If we do not recover the useful data agreed for the job and no recovery fee is due, we return the advance payment.

The advance payment reserves engineering time, specialist equipment and, where relevant, donor preparation. It also protects us where approved work is completed but a customer later withdraws or does not collect. If you cancel after recovery has begun, we retain only the reasonable amount needed to cover work and direct loss already incurred and return any balance. Nothing in this paragraph affects your statutory rights.

8. Turnaround

Turnaround runs from the day your device reaches the lab, not the day you send it. Standard is 5–10 working days, Express is 3–5 working days, and Emergency is 24 hours.

These are the periods we work to and meet in the ordinary course. They are not guarantees: donor parts occasionally have to be sourced, and some faults only reveal their difficulty once the device is open. If a job is going to run over, we tell you rather than let the date pass.

9. Getting your data back

Before payment, we can show the recovered structure and a sample file, arrange a remote screen-sharing review or let you inspect the result at the London lab. After you confirm the result and pay, recovered data is returned on suitable external media you supply or that we provide. You are responsible for checking that copy before our working copy is destroyed — see the privacy policy for the 48-hour maximum period.

10. Devices we still have

Devices are stored at our lab while work is in progress and returned by insured courier or collected in person.

If a device is not collected after we have told you it is ready, we will contact you at the details you gave us. Where a device remains uncollected for a long period we may dispose of it under the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977, which requires us to give you notice first. We would much rather return it.

11. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

Subject to that, our liability for any claim connected with a job is limited to the amount you paid us for that job. We are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business or the value of the data itself, which is a value only you can know and only your own backup can protect.

If you are a consumer, you have statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 — including that services are carried out with reasonable care and skill. Nothing here affects those rights.

12. Cancelling

You can cancel before you accept the quotation and owe nothing. Once recovery work has started at your request it cannot always be stopped safely. Where work has been done, we may deduct the reasonable value of that work and direct loss from an advance payment and return the balance. The enhanced assessment fee in section 3 becomes non-refundable only after that assessment has begun.

Consumers who buy at a distance normally have 14 days to cancel. If you ask us to begin within that period, you are asking us to start before it ends and may be charged for work completed — we will say so in writing before starting.

13. Data protection

How we treat your enquiry, and the personal data held on your device, is set out in our privacy policy. In short: for the data on your device we act on your instructions, we inspect only what recovery and verification require, and we destroy our copy under the short retention rule when the job is done. Our use of browser storage is explained separately in the cookie policy.

14. This website

The content, design and images on this site belong to us. You are welcome to read, quote and link to it; you may not reproduce it as your own.

Prices, turnarounds and capabilities shown here are kept current and may change. The quotation we give you is what binds us.

15. Complaints, law and jurisdiction

If something has gone wrong, tell us: hello@datraction.co.uk or 020 3903 9920. We would rather fix it than have you live with it.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction.