The price list · nothing withheld
Plymouth recovery prices, in full. Every band is printed; your own figure comes in writing.
The bottom of the list is £250 + VAT, and every band above it appears below, so your device can be placed, from anywhere in Plymouth, before you ring. Reaching the exact number is free of charge, whatever the postmark, and on most work nothing is invoiced when a recovery does not succeed.
You will be talking to an engineer
0800 6890668
Where each sort of job's price opens.
| Starts at | The job | What falls in the band |
|---|---|---|
| £250 + VAT | Cards and pen drives | Any flash media: SD, microSD, CompactFlash, USB sticks |
| £300 + VAT | One disk | Hard disk, SSD or NVMe — bare, or left in the laptop |
| £300 + VAT | Macs of every kind | FileVault and APFS, HFS+, T2 and Apple silicon |
| £400 + VAT | CCTV, DVR and NVR units | The recorder on its own — Hikvision, Dahua, Swann and the rest |
| from £500 + VAT | NAS boxes, RAID sets and servers | RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10; QNAP, Synology, WD, PowerEdge, ProLiant, Lenovo |
| from £500 + VAT | Databases and mail stores | SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Exchange |
| £800 + VAT and up | Virtual machine images | VMDK, VHDX, VHD and QCOW2 — broken snapshot chains, damaged VM folders |
| £800 + VAT and up | Forensic work and its reports | Civil and employment matters written up, with every step logged |
| from £1,250 + VAT | SANs and large arrays | A single volume spread over several arrays |
Your device not listed? The symptom checker tells you three things together: which band you fall in, the likely fault, and what to steer clear of before posting.
Four notes to read alongside it.
- Every figure here excludes VAT, which is added on top at the standard UK rate.
- These are opening figures, not invoices. Your own price follows from whatever fault turns up, and it is written down for you when the free diagnosis ends, before anything is charged.
- No recovery and no fee, on most jobs. If what you were looking for does not come back, there is nothing to pay for the attempt.
- Half up front applies to three sorts of job: recorders, forensic instructions, and repairs that put donor parts inside the drive. Each takes the same bench hours whether or not it succeeds. The rest is due once your files are back with you.
One band, two jobs, two different bills.
What follows once the quote reaches you.
| The situation | What that points to | The charge |
|---|---|---|
| You accept it | The work starts at the agreed figure | Payable once you have seen the file list |
| You decline it | Your device goes home with the findings | Nothing owed for the diagnosis or the return post |
| Nothing can be recovered | No recovery, no fee applies to most work | You pay nothing |
| Something unexpected turns up | We stop and ring before doing anything more | The agreed figure still stands |
| Donor parts, recorders, forensic work | Half before, half when it works | Stated plainly before you agree |
| Another lab has already opened it | Quoted case by case after the diagnosis | No-recovery-no-fee may not apply |
The £49 advertisement, and what it leaves out
- £49 buys a place in a queue, not a recovery — what you get for it is your drive on somebody else's bench. The real figure follows later, when leaving has become awkward.
- Ask what a failure costs — where nothing promises that failure is free, nobody hurries to bring you bad news.
- Ask whether the price can shift — ours does not move. Anything we meet once you have agreed is ours to carry. The invoice equals the quote.
- Ask where the work is actually done — a good many firms add a margin and forward the drive elsewhere. Yours stays with our own engineers throughout.
What no table can settle: read these figures literally. A lone hard disk carrying nothing but a logical fault is priced at £300 + VAT — not approximately £300, and not £300 with additions on top. What a list cannot foresee is how many donor parts a mechanical failure will want. Answering that is the diagnosis's job, and the reason your figure is on paper before work starts.
Questions asked before posting it.
What does the work usually cost?
Two questions settle it: which device, and how many disks are inside. Flash — an SD card, a pen drive — is the £250 + VAT band. A lone drive — hard disk or SSD, bare or still fitted in a laptop or an iMac — costs £300 + VAT. Recorders are £400 + VAT. The moment a second disk is involved — NAS, RAID set, server — the opening figure moves to £500 + VAT. Virtual machine disks and forensic instructions both begin at £800 + VAT. It is all in the table above; your own number is put in writing once the diagnosis is done.
Is the diagnosis really free?
Entirely. Read the quote, turn it down, and you owe nothing at all. Postage to the lab is your only expense; the journey home we pay for.
When is a deposit wanted?
There are three sorts of job where the bench hours and the parts get spent whether or not files come back: forensic instructions, recorders whose disk is built into the unit, and repairs calling for matched donor components. On those, half the agreed figure is paid before work starts and half when your files return. All other work runs on no recovery, no fee.
At what point is the bill paid?
After you have looked over the file list and told us it is correct, and before any fresh media leaves here — the terms say as much. On an ordinary job nothing is asked for at the start and nothing part-way through.
Are there extras on the invoice?
None at all. Looking at it costs nothing, return postage comes out of our own pocket, and the sum you pay is the sum you agreed. One extra exists — priority handling — settled in price before you take it.
We have a cheaper quote elsewhere. What then?
Ask them three things. Does that price still stand after the drive is opened? What do you owe when nothing whatever is recovered? And whose lab does the actual work? Ours: it stands, you owe nothing, and nothing is sent on to a third party.
That is the whole list. Your own figure follows a free look.
Send the form, or send the parcel, whichever suits you better. The look is free, your figure is put on paper, and what follows is your decision.