Carbonite not there when needed.

I've been a subscriber to Carbonite offline storage/backup and have been pretty happy with it, however when the time came that I actually needed it their server is down. Has been now for over 48hours, we've been on to their online support and that's all they can tell us.

They wont even send out emails to tell us when it's back on line. Very disappointed.
Defeats the whole purpose of offline backup.

Defeats the purpose of a backup service, for sure.

I've been using SpiderOak, and am very happy with it. I'm only using it for free, however, since I'm using less than 2 GB of space - just backing up most crucial files with them. Their software's been impressive and they have clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I have all my machines, including VMs, backing up to the same account, and some folders synchronized by their system. It's really neat. They charge by the amount of space you use, however, so it may not be feasible for you, depending on your needs. Just throwing that out there.

We tried the free trial with Carbonite and was happy with how it worked so subscribed. Not big dollars and more then enough space for our needs but pointless if you cannot access it.
We'll need to stay with them at least until we can get our data back, then I might review the situation.
I'm seriously thinking of going with a NAS at home instead but one of the reasons we went for offline in the first place was because of bushfire risk over the summer period.

Very troublesome. As a Carbonite Authorized Partner I'm concerned about my irate customers.

Well the online help was 'helpful' in as much as was polite and worked out what the issue was, not at all helpful in telling me when services would resume or being able to email once they were.
Just glad I'm not in desperate need of the data right here right now.

Hardly the point though, we pay money to have secure backup available as and when needed and it's been 48 hrs now (bit over in fact) for me in any case that I cannot access it.

Here is the error message I am getting all the time.

It looks like they have resolved the problem.

Sorry, not at my end. Still getting same error message as before.

Tried un-installing and re-installing via carbonites site. Following their install instructions exactly. Still getting exactly the same error as before. Cant do a thing.

Could MSE have anything to do with it? That's the only new protection type software installed that I did not have previously when I was using Carbonite.

Having said that the tech help guy said it was a fault at their end. (carbonite server)

That's very disappointing to hear, especially if it has been down for 48 hours . It almost defeats the whole purpose having access to an online backup.

Do you think you'll switch to another provider after this episode?

I'm currently using a NAS for all my backups, which has some upsides - but there are also many pitfalls with having an on-site NAS. If it's important data, you could always sync your NAS with a cloud based backup service - I know that some of the current generation units can do this.