trouble with unlinking of accounts

[JohntheMathGuy]

I made a mistake today that I am unable to recover from. I was sent an invite to Dropbox business. I need to share files with another company. My mistake was when Dropbox gave me the option to link this outside business account to my own personal account, I clicked "yes".  Apparently I have saved some money, but on the downside, I no longer have control of my account. Since I am only loosely tied to this company, this is unacceptable.

I have (or had?) a Dropbox Plus account, which I understand gives me access to live support. This seems to have been disabled, probably since I am now just a "team member". This is especially aggravating, since the problem I am trying to solve has apparently disabled my opportunity to fix the problem is a quick manner. (I set in an email.)

I attempted to fix the problem through the website. There is a help page on how to unlink accounts. I logged in to Dropbox, selected the "General" tab and clicked on "Link accounts", which is supposed to allow me to unlink my account. The interface asked me to log in again. When I clicked on "Sign In", I was told that I already signed in to that account. Stuck. It would not allow me past this point.  

It would appear that I no longer have authority to regain control of my own account.

Any suggestions would be welcome. I hope that someone at Dropbox is monitoring this and has the authority to make sure that this never happens again to a loyal customer. 

[Mark]

Your account is now owned and operated by the company - which you agreed to when selecting Yes I'm afraid. 

The way to resolve it is to ask the company to remove you from the Team.... note not DELETE they need to remove you. 

[JohntheMathGuy]

I do appreciate the prompt response. I hope that I can get a quick response from the admin.

One issue that you have not resolved, or rather, you have not indicated that it would be resolved. I recognize that I made a mistake, but the effect of the mistake has been large. Please tell me what steps you will take to ensure that this sort of mistake will not be repeated by some other hapless user?

[Rich]

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@JohntheMathGuy wrote:

Please tell me what steps you will take to ensure that this sort of mistake will not be repeated by some other hapless user?

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We don't work for Dropbox. We're just regular users like yourself. Could the on-boarding process for new team members be better? Perhaps, but all the information needed is presented while you're joining a team. Most issues like this come from either not reading the full content, or not understanding it and then proceeding anyway. There's not much Dropbox can do to fix that.

To elaborate a bit on what Mark mentioned above, the team admin needs to convert your account back to an individual account. It's important that they don't just remove you from the team as doing so would delete your account. If that were to happen, the team admin only has seven days to restore your account.

[JohntheMathGuy]

Mark and Rich,

I apologize for misunderstanding your roles. Your service to the Dropbox community is appreciated.

regards

John

[hapless user BC]

Hi John. Same thing happened to me. Felt sort of ambushed. Seems very poorly thought out to be able to drop your subscription and get all files swallowed up by a client with a single click. Poor engineering. Love how the Dropbox Support email gets an "unmonitored box" response. Really? Working with client admin now to try to get my account back.

[hapless user BC]

And thanks, Rich for pointing me towards a solution.

[mollymayeux]

same thing happened to me!  crazy how helpless you all the sudden feel 

this should not be this easy to do 

[AG84]

I have the exact same problem and afraid my personal account will get deleted by the admin by accident. 

Our accounts are in Dutch so I would just like to double check the exact steps the admin needs to take in order for my personal account not to get deleted Could you confirm ? 

1. Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
3. Click the Members tab.
4. Click the gear icon next to the name of the person you want to remove.
5. Select Delete member.
6. Click Convert to individual Dropbox Basic account instead.
7. Click Convert account.

[Megan]

Hi @AG84, welcome to our Community! 

These are the exact steps your admin would need to follow, in order for your account to revert back to an individual one, instead of being deleted.

If you have any questions, let me know!