Dropbox full because of shared folder

I have a dropbox account with 1Tb of space and am using 28Gb of space and when I try to add files dropbox tells me i don't have enough room to add 1 Gb of files.  Who can I call to resolve the problem?

Well, we all understand what Dave is saying but as mere users it is not what we expect. Quite often you want to have occasional access to a shared folder just maybe to see a few files in it. So why should I then not be able to sync my photos simply because I have a momentary need to look at a few files on someone else's filestore.

I don't want to pay for their vast data storage requirement, I just want occassional access to some of the data.

I think Dave and Dropbox just don't really understand how most of us use dropbox.

I think, Dave, we understand your technical arguement. It just ignores the way most of us see the cloud world. I am now going to have to unshare the folder and I cannot share again because I do not have the capacity to look. Therefore, dropbox becomes, at a stroke much less useful to me.

I think it is madness myself.

I would suggest, the 'owner' of a shared folder pays for the capacity they use. Others need to have enough bandwidth for the files they actually use or look at.

Maybe it should all be set to read only, and visitors to share folders can optionally make individual files/folders read/write access,. Then they get charged for it i.e. becomes part of their allowance.

Lol *sigh*

+1 for Adam

-1 for Dave

I'll chime in here. Just ran into the quota brick wall myself from other folks shared folders. I guess it has forced me to understand more of how dropbox works.  I have removed all the shares, but I guess I will not be able to contribute to any shares that are individually over my quota. Pretty wacko and makes dropbox fairly unusable.

They charge by space - but charge hundreds of time for the same space. Not bad for them if they can get away with it.

@Mark Mc, if you took to the streets and did a poll where you asked passersby who used cloud storage services if they thought their personal cloud storage quota would be used if they accepted an invitation to another user's shared folder, how do you think the majority would reply? I guarantee the majority would expect their personal quota to be unaffected by connecting to shared folders. Most people would think the two things are completely disconnected.

This is all we are saying: the expectation of the majority of cloud storage users is that personal quotas is one thing and any connection to a shared folder is completely separate.

@Rich R

Also not true. Storage is cheap, bandwidth, which you mentioned, is not, and this is where the majority of the costs are incurred. The more data you transfer, the more it costs Dropbox, and you, as a Basic user, pay nothing towards that usage.

In that case, their charging model makes even less sense.

Just about every other charging model I've come across that charges for bandwidth, charges for downloads, not up loads. Uploads happen once, downloads can happen many times.

I have a free account with 5GB storage. As I mentioned above in a previous post, I have an ISO image of a linux build for the Raspberry Pi in my space. It's over 1GB in size. I've shared a link to that image. 

Anyone can download that image as often as they like (even if I had a paid for account - the account type is not the point here). So, if I had been paying, I'd have effectively paid for a single upload of that file, but any number of downloads would be free.

If the cost of bandwidth is the reason behind this charging model, it is still implemented in a bizarre, counter-intuitive way which is easy to abuse for those who want to, but a real nuisance to legitimate users who just want to share some files.

In @Ben S's case above, even if he had paid nearly £100/year for the 1 TB account (and not uploaded anything so he could have lots of space to upload to other accounts) he'd still have to upgrade to the £132/year account just so he could upload to this one account.

Your alternative, of shared links and file requests may work, but it is clunky and counter intuitive.

It also breaks the charging model again, because the upload still has to be made (costing DB whatever it costs them) yet no additional payment is received for the use of that bandwidth.

It boils down to this: DB charge by storage space, but then make the way accounts are used difficult because of their bandwidth costs. This leads to a counter-intuitive and essentially unfair charging model that is either expensive or cumbersome (if worked around) for many users, while still allowing for activities that cost them money but cannot charge for.

How does that make sense?

It's a shame, because otherwise, DB is a useful service. But it is going to hurt its long term prospects when its competitors (like Google Drive, OneDrive etc) offer a much more transparent, cheaper and easy to use service.

Yep, its totally annoying.  We all seem to think Dropbox was very useful, and liked it. They as soon as any of us start sharing with anyone the whole thing collapses, because we might want to have a look at a few files of another user who has a large dropbox.

So, we all have to stop using dropbox for any sharing because it, in its totally stupid way, whats to charge us for all the storage of all our friends and colleagues.

It is, functionally, mad.

And then we get the reply which seems to be written with someone who has not empathy for human beings, completely missing the point we make, with the same old dirge.

Seems to me it is up to dropbox, then can either build on the support we all have for a dropbox that really used to work for us, and address the point that is stopping any of us, using dropbox to ever again share with anybody.

Madness.

Yeah, this is pretty terrible, what's the point in buying a TB of space if we can't share it with any clients without it also costing them per month. That's incredibly unfriendly, bit disappointed to find this out.

They claim that it's to stop stacking of free accounts for unlimited space? Well, only have it count against peoples quotas if the shared folder is created by a free account then?

Maybe instead of constantly using up bandwidth, just have it store the properties of the shared file and you have to download the meat of it when you want it.

Allow read only logins to a paid account (oh wait, business only, got to get more money).

Take the quota out of the holder of the shared account. We only currently share working folders with 2 clients, we could easily absorb that into our quota, they can't.

Any of these solutions which took all of 10 minutes to think up would be less offensive to front end users and not come off as just money grabby

• 1) A shared folder takes NO storage capacity. (folders are not files)

This is a matter of semantics, really. Also, folders on a filesystem do indeed take up space, albeit only a few kilobytes.

• 2) Files that are in your account take storage capacity.
  3) Files in a shared folder are in your account (see 2)

This is precisely the concept that is not explained to the user up-front, and that is the complaint: I should not have to search the help center or ask a question on the forums about how the use of one main, advertised feature of the service (joining a shared folder) seems to gimp another main, advertised feature of the service (storage capacity).

• If you are sold a bookcase that fits 2000 books, and with that bookcase you are given the ability to share books with others and have those books available to you and the original owner, and you are invited to share in a section of books that are in someones 5,000,000 book bookcase,

This failed analogy seems to be a rehashing of your "amount of data accessible" argument.

• That does not make your bookcase capable of holding 5,002,000 Books! EOL.

Of course not. It means you have access to your own bookcase that holds 2,000 books, and you also can walk over to your friends' bookcase and read one of his 5,000,000 books. If the books exist in both cases, they take up twice as much space in the library. To suggest otherwise belies a basic understanding of the physical world.