Update: 28th October 2019
DayOne has since contacted me with a fix for the situation. Please read the comments for detailed run-down.
tl;dr – check your old DayOne entries to see if it’s missing the full version of the photos.
I was looking through some old entries in DayOne when I noticed all my photos were quite pixelated, and in the corner of the photo there was a circle icon with a line through it.
When I contacted DayOne supported, they told me this was an instance of the image never being synced to their server and that I’d have to re-add the image to my entry.
This was strange, as this was an entry from three years ago and I was pretty certain I’d seen non-pixelated version of this photo in DayOne before. I began checking all my old entries and discovered that any post prior to 2017 was affected.
It takes me a while to convince DayOne support of this and they finally agreed to talk to their Server Team.
Half a day later, I get this response:
I tell the support person that at least four years worth of entries are affected and that I don’t have copies of every photo (eg. screenshots or photos taken straight from the DayOne app – those don’t get saved to the camera roll) and ask him whether they have a backup of my data.
He says they don’t have backups and that I should really backup my own photos. He tells me he backs up all his photos on three different services and that there are free services I could look into. 😒
(Yes, tell your customer that after you lose their data it’s really their fault for trusting you with their images)
I ask them what the solution is, and essentially they tell me there is none, that I have to just replace the images with my own copies.
I take photos of every handwritten letter I send out and receive (as a way to archive my correspondences), and I don’t keep copies of these photos in my camera roll for privacy reasons. Now, all the pixelated images are impossible to read and I’ve no way to take new photos (especially the letters I’ve sent out already). This also doesn’t include the hundreds of photos I had saved in DayOne that are now lost.
I really hope none of you are in the same boat as me, but I thought I’d post this out there so you can check.
And even if you’re not affected this time, probably rethink whether you want to trust DayOne with your memories, because they certainly don’t seem to care about safekeeping them.
@vishae oh wow 🙁 that’s terrible! That’s not very assuring. I need to check my old entries…
@vishae Oh no! That’s horrible. I’m almost scared to go back through all my old entries now. And very disappointing to hear how Day One seems to not care.
@vasta @vishae Oh, no! That’s terrible! Are these the same people who exposed private journals publicly not too long ago? If so, not a good look for them.
@vishae This is terrible! Not just the bug, but even the customer support. What kind of service lectures their users when it is they who have messed up? Pathetic. Especially poor given the subscription they charge.
@smokey yes, the same company. I’d given them the benefit of the doubt quite a number of times already. In the past, they at least sounded sorry for the inconvenience and worked to fix the issue. This time it was very much a “shrug what can you do?”
@smoke @vasta @amit Update on the Day One issue: the day after terminating communication with Day One support, I get contacted by the support manager, and then by Paul Mayne (CEO/Founder of Day One).
They had both apologised for the way the issue was handled and have worked with the devs to try to find a solution to my situation.
They tell me the bug affects <1% of users and that they would have a hot fix out by the end of the week. This fix would hopefully restore my missing images.
I’m happy to see that what I’d initially experienced from their support team is not the norm and I’m cautiously optimistic that my journals would be restored to me. I guess I can trust them with my stuff for a bit longer?
@vishae Ugh….
@vishae Good luck! Keep us posted.
@vishae Glad to hear that they came to their senses about the way they handled things, and fingers crossed their fix restores your images. (<1% of users could still be a lot of people and a ton of images depending on the size of the DayOne userbase; that’s always a bit of a weasely statistic to trot out in an apology….)
@vishae That’s the way to customer delight. Good luck, hope they are able to get your journals back.
@vishae Great to hear they are taking steps to fix the issue, and fix the horrendous customer service experience. Sorry you had to go through that.
Latest update to this situation: the TestFlight version of DayOne (4.2.3) fixed the missing images issue on iOS. I’ve been told that the macOS fix has been submitted to Mac App Store for approval. So all seems good so far.
@vishae Whew! 🤞