SURVEY TIME!!!

[AccountingDrone]

Hm, I have all that sort of data on a thumb drive in my fireproof bailout security box along with the mortgage paperwork, divorce paperwork, marriage certificate, insurance paperwork and a backup hard drive of photos, music, ebooks and other documents. I have a duplicate security box stashed up at my mum's house - that hard drive gets backed up once a month [I take the one from the house here up and swap it for that one, then run a backup when we get home.]

[Kagato]

Sorry I haven't had much of a chance to keep up with the thread, things have been rather busy on my end.

To those of you who keep asking "Will it be cheaper than a bank safe deposit box", I must simply say "No." The reason being that we do not have the backing of a major bank or corporation and can not absorb costs through other avenues. There's other factors involved as well which are listed below.

As it is, there is a lot of factors that need to be taken into account if you want to compare us with cloud 'deathswitch' services or safety deposit boxes

- Deathswitch services are largely automated due to their being on servers located on the web - apart from typical technical support there is minimal human interaction required, even with regards to setting up accounts. Human interaction in these services can ideally be limited to Tech Support and Customer support. In comparison due to Life Capsules being offline media, there will be a need for human interaction, but in contrast a users data is more secure, except for in the possibility of theft or fire.

- Safe Deposit boxes provided by banks are not FDIC insured. I don't live in the USA myself so I don't know all the details behind this, I don't know if you have to provide your own contents insurance for what is in the box, but what that tells me is that if your box is taken in a bank heist, you're out of luck unless you have insured the contents of the box. Deathswitch services have an inherent risk of the servers being hacked or their data compromised, since you can not really 'insure' data, if your information was stolen, your only recourse would be to sue the company, assuming they have not included a disclaimer against such occurences. I make no claims that we will be immune to such risks of fire/theft ourself, that would be simply foolish, however we will be taking out insurance where we can to cover occurences that may not be able to be covered under disclaimers or waivers.

No matter the choice, there will be some risk involved.

With regards to price, we're doing some number crunching and trying to think of ways that we can bring the cost down but I can't realistically see us dropping the cost below $60 a year at the very lowest while still being able to provide a top-notch service (at $25 a year we would barely cover the cost of the drives and the initial shipping costs for the drive and paperwork, leaving nothing over whatsoever to cover other overheads such as utility costs - thus rendering us bankrupt in a VERY short time.) Paying $5 a month for a quality worst-case-scenario service I think isn't too much to ask, some people spend more than that a DAY on their daily long black/flat white at starschmucks.

[the_std]

Paying $5 a month for a quality worst-case-scenario service I think isn't too much to ask, some people spend more than that a DAY on their daily long black/flat white at starschmucks.

While I see where you're going with this, you're just going to keep running into the same problem - do people *want* to pay $60 a year for the service you're offering? Is your client base there? Are there enough people who can be convinced to pay more for your service than they would pay for a safe deposit box or for the cloud-based services? You compare your price to that of a drink at Starbucks, and while that's true, there is a reason Starbucks can justify those prices. They have people who are willing to pay them for the product that the company offers. You do not have that luxury as a fledgling company.

You can justify your prices to us all you like, and we, a united group of employees and employers, can see your point. Yes, we understand where the money is going. However, it doesn't matter how many costs you have to cover if your price and your clientele don't match up. Can you guarantee me that my information will be insured to the FDIC level you're negating safe deposit boxes with and guaranteed to be not tampered with in transit, which would be the hard-code data equivalent to the hacking you're decrying with the cloud-based services?

I really am not trying to be mean here. I'm trying to objectively show you some holes in your game-plan, some of the negativity you can come up against once you start the company. The difference is that, here, you haven't invested yet. You haven't spent the money, and answering these questions can help prevent the loss of clients in the future.

[Kagato]

I get where you are coming from, that is the whole point of our market research - to ensure such a client base will be THERE, to try to decide a starting rate that is not too high/low and to make sure it is viable for us to keep seeking out financing to get this project off the ground without running ourself bankrupt either due to lack of customers or due to prices being so low that we shoot ourselves in the foot due to being unable to cover our running costs.

The thing that perplexes me is the fact that the way people make it sound, peace of mind is not even worth 17 cents a day. That is how much it works out to when you take a $5 per month cost and divide it by 30 days average per month. (well it's 16.6666667 to be exact)

With regards to insurance, while the modules are in transit we will be using registered and insured mail, though there is only so much one can do, if someone wanted to steal the mail out of a postal workers van while it was being delivered, that is something that is out of our hands and is where encryption/password protection and insurance will come into play. When it comes down to it, we will be using all viable and reasonable means available to us to make sure peoples data stays secure.

[Kheldarson]

Let's put it this way then.

For your $60, I could buy a cheap, but decent, fireproof safe, and a decent sized flash drive and keep all of my important files safe.

How do you improve on that?

[Andara Bledin]

The thing that perplexes me is the fact that the way people make it sound, peace of mind is not even worth 17 cents a day.

When you realize that the number one password in the business community is still "Password1" you have to admit to yourself that the vast majority of everybody is a blithering idiot when it comes to security.

^-.-^