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Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have vowed to improve their terms and conditions of cloud storage contracts after a review from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the body has announced.
The giants join BT, Dixons Carphone, Dropbox, Google, JustCloud, Livedrive and Mozy in moving forward with improved conditions. Common areas where Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft will make changes include giving ‘adequate notice’ to customers before significant changes are made to the service, or whether it is suspended or cancelled, as well as cancellation rights and refunds if customers do not want to accept ‘significant’ changes.
“We are pleased that Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have joined seven previous companies in working with the CMA and agreeing commitments to improve their terms and conditions and, as a result, millions of cloud storage users will benefit from fairer terms which will help them make the right choices when using cloud storage services,” Andrea Coscelli, CMA acting chief executive said in a statement.
In May last year, the CMA issued an open letter to cloud storage providers warning them of issues if they didn’t smarten up their customer service. “If a term is not fair it will not be legally binding on a consumer and you are at risk of enforcement action,” the letter, from project director Cecilia Parker Aranha, explained. “Having clear and fair terms will save you time, help prevent disputes and reputational damage, and protect your business if something goes wrong.”
The underlying issue which adds to the overall landscape of this announcement is the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Ian Moyse, board member of the Cloud Industry Forum, and who is helping to organise training courses for businesses on GDPR, told this publication that cloud was “entering the growing up phase…this will benefit the industry as a whole, not just the consumer.”
As regular readers of this publication will know, plenty of cloud companies can disappear with little – or no – notice. 2017 kicked off with the news that developer-friendly cloud storage provider Bitcasa was ‘no more’, according to a cryptic message left on the company’s website, while customers of Nitrous.io were given two weeks to shift their data before its primary service shut down back in November.
The CMA added that as part of its compliance review, all cloud storage providers ‘co-operated and constructively engaged’ with the authority, and ‘voluntarily made changes to their terms and conditions’.
