Dropbox no longer overwriting files

Yes, Dropbox has apparently fallen under the "new and different is always better" spell.  Guess the product and engineering staff had a bit too much time on their hands so they redesigned something that didn't need it.  What a shame.  I have pondered getting a paid plan but with things like this I would never do it.

Hi Hannah,

Using iOS 15.5. It’s on an iPad eighth generation. It also does the same thing on my phone which is an iPhone Max 10.

I tried on installing dropbox and reinstalling. This happened once in the past I think maybe a little over a year ago after an update. When the next update came around it worked properly again. It will upload the file but keeps  the old file so I have to delete the old file to make sure I am updated. It won’t prompt me with (file already exists do you want to overwrite?)

I have spent the last month in the most infuriating dialogue with Dropbox staff regarding this issue. The first person told me about 4 or 5 times I need to open Illustrator files from the Dropbox app itself on iPad, even though this cannot be done. The second person said "everything points to this being a problem with Illustrator" even though I had said over and over that this is happening on multiple apps. Then they told me several times that I need to update my iPad, even though I had already said my iPad is up to date. Each email takes several days for them to respond, and each response ignores something I've already said, ignores something I've asked, provides illogical advice, or tells me to do something that Dropbox can't do.

I was told there was no reason why this should be happening, according to one Dropbox engineer. 

Last word of advice was to contact each external app and tell them to fix it.

I don't think Dropbox staff understand how their own app works, and honestly I think the right advice is to switch to another service. I've never been so frustrated with a support team in my life.

Hi, this is also the case for me.

Hi all, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

For anyone affected, would it be OK if we reach out via email to investigate a bit further? 

Has the Dropbox staff done some due diligence to investigate and try to reproduce the problem?  Several have provided repro steps- has anyone from Dropbox tried to follow them and see the problem for themselves?  If not, what is the point of contacting people by email for more info?  I was a software engineer for almost 20 years.  We didn't badger people to try this, try that, try this other thing; we took the necessary information, and then investigated on our own.  The fact that this issue existed before, was resolved, and then reappeared after a Dropbox app update is more than weighty evidence that problem is in the app.

Hi aisb, thanks very much for your comments, rest assured that they will be passed along to our team.

Would you mind sending over the ticket numbers from the communications you've been having with our support team?

As for you clira, I completely understand where you're coming from, but know that we're definitely looking at this on our end as well.

Would you like us to contact you via email?

This is the same bug I've noticed about a year ago. It's intermittent: it comes, you suffer it for about 2-3 months, and then goes with the nth Dropbox update. The sad part is the support staff is absolutely of no help (or worse) and they like to send instructions like: "please, turn off your TV set, wait for 5 minutes, then turn on again and everything should work again...", no matter you're not asking for help about any TV set at all...