Carbonite and probably all or most other consumer-level online backup services have outrageous Terms of Service that loudly disclaim responsibility to provide the service they profess to offer. For example, here is a snippet of the Carbonite ToS from http://www.carbonite.com/terms-of-use/terms (I changed the following to all lower-case for ease of reading; the original is in all caps:

"the services and third-party components are provided "as is," "where is," "as available," "with all faults" and, to the fullest extent permitted by law, without warranty of any kind. carbonite disclaims all warranties with respect to the services and third-party components, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement and title, and any warranties regarding quiet enjoyment, reliability, timeliness and performance of the services. carbonite does not warrant that the services will meet your requirements, or that the operation of the services will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that defects in the services will be corrected, or that encryption algorithms, associated keys and other security measures will be secure or effective."

The whole purpose of these cloud backup services is to provide a level of secure disaster recovery for you. Yet in their Terms, they simply disclaim everything. I would much rather pay more for such a service, and have its Terms state that they will make reasonable efforts to provide reliable service substantially as advertised. Would that be asking too much?