The business of data recovery is a Wild West, at least within the UK. They are a patchwork of sole traders and independent businesses and access to a good company is geography dependant. I have a broken hard drive that has many years of photographs and music, which has led me down a path I didn’t want to tread because it led me to a company that conducts questionable practices. Whilst I have been screwed over, I can at least try and warn others through my website and role as a journalist.
My experience with trying to recover my data has been a troubled one. The first person I asked to recover my data resulted in me losing contact with a man based in Bath. I had to chase him to be told that the data was unrecoverable but was given no further explanation. He has since closed his data recovery business and now works as a wedding photographer. The second individual I went to was recommended to me by a local store and he did give me an explanation: scratched platters. The news depressed me and I was in a state of denial, leading me to think I needed a bigger company with more resources. I found Fields Data Recovery based in Bridgend while searching for data recovery companies online.
I went to Fields Data Recovery because they had a strong score and reviews on Trustpilot. I believed that due to the high volume of good reviews that it would have been hard to be faked. I went to their polished website to get a quote and they were keen for my business. Their website did have a guarantee of no data, no charge. A sales representative connected me and offered to collect my hard drive through DHL. Their pushy sales approach should have been a warning sign, but I was desperate so I continued with the process.
Fields’ representatives continued the hard sale by telling me they sent my hard drive to their head technician and said they could rebuild it. They used meaningless words since they said there was no guarantee of data recovery, but they were charging me £750 which was bumped up to £900 after VAT. They implied that they could fix the hard drive to recover my data. Fields’ representative told me they would contact me in a week. After two weeks I had to contact Fields and they told me the data was corrupted and unrecoverable. It was after this point I further researched Fields and discovered they had a bad reputation. I ensured that my hard drive was returned to me before leaving negative reviews on Trustpilot and Google. This resulted in an aggressive email from Fields challenging what I said, not an action that a legitimate company would perform.
I did send my hard drive to one more company, R3 in Sheffield. They gave me disappointing news that they couldn’t recover data but at least they only charged me for posting my hard drive back to me. This trauma with the hard drive exasperated my anxiety and depression: I have felt foolish for not backing up my data in some other way, and I have grieved over losing pictures of holidays, pets, and friends and family and my family’s music collection. I am resigned that the data is lost, but have kept the hard drive in the vein hope there might be a technological breakthrough.
I am writing this article from a state of bitterness and anger and I am willing to admit feeling shame for being taken advantage of. If it was simply a case that they overcharged me but retrieved my data I would have dismissed the issue as a one-time cost. At least I can collate information about Fields and if people read this article and decide against using Fields it will be a small victory. This article is cathartic for me and at least I have some sort of pulpit.
One of the founders of Fields was Jamie Wallis. They are the co-owner of many companies. Along with Fields Data Recovery, they were also involved with Rapid Data Recovery which was also based in Bridgend, and a red flag since why would two data recovery companies be based in the same location with the same ownership. Wallis also owned a Sugar Daddy website and a PPI claim company. BuzzFeed News placed a Freedom of Information request to Bridgend County Council for Trading Standard’s complaints made in 2018: Fields Data Recovery received 151 complaints and Rapid Data Recovery had 26 complaints. Wales Online reported that Wallis’ companies received over 800 complaints and one of his companies, Action Direct UK, was banned from taking on new clients by the Ministry of Justice back in 2011.
Wallis ended up becoming the MP for Bridgend from 2019 to 2024 and the most memorable moment of his parliamentary career was coming out as transgender. Wallis earned a lot of praise for coming out, but that doesn’t stop them from being a suspicious person. In 2022 Wallis was convicted for fleeing a car accident in 2021 which resulted in a £2,500 fine and a six-month driving ban.
Fields has several directors and they can be looked up on HRMC’s website. They have been directors of many other companies. These include Rapid Data Recovery, data recovery companies operating in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, and some investment firms. Notably, many of these people were directors of Quickie Divorce Limited but resigned by 2022, yet moved on to Endeavour Law Limited. Endeavour Law has poor reviews on Google and Trustpilot.
Fields have been operating suspiciously for years. A segment from Germany’s c’t magazine has been on YouTube for 14 years and they reported on a university professor who went to a company seemingly based in Berlin, but found his money was transferred to Wales, charged him €800 for a deep scan, and only retrieved 8 out of 56 files. Fields’ website claims they have offices in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, but it’s doubtful their reputation is any better in those countries. Their American office has a bad reputation, having an awful 2 out of 5 on Yelp and on Reddit American and British customers shared their bad experiences.
In another Reddit post users shared their bad experiences and the website rapid-data-recovery.co.uk has been set up to expose Rapid Data Recovery and Fields Associates. R3 Data Recovery has two sections on their website about fields which you can read here and here. Fields Data Recovery has a strong 4.5 rating on Trustpoint from 1,992 reviews, but a deeper dive shows things aren’t as good as they appear. On Google, they have a score of 4 out of 5 and a rule of thumb is anything below a 4.1 is suspect.  Whilst on the Better Business Bureau website Fields’ American branch gets highly defensive when customers complain: it turns out the customer isn’t always right in their mind. On Money Saving Expert’s website, there is a forum post that has eight pages of complaints from 2010 to 2018.
Even people who have worked for Fields have raised concerns. A user on Reddit asked if he worked for a scammer and they told them the company had issues in the past, whilst on Glassdoor one reviewer pointed out that the company lied to potential customers to get their business, and other reviewers have pointed out there’s a lack of training and the management of the company are more interested in the sales team instead of the engineering team.
Fields Data Recovery is an insidious company that needs to be exposed as much as possible. They should be investigated by the authorities for their business practices. At the very least people could vote with wallets, anyone who has been a victim should speak out, and hopefully a bigger outlet like the BBC, Channel 4, or Which will investigate them.
