Lycos Deletes Emails and Says 'Too Bad!'

Billosaur writes "The Consumerist brings us a tale of woe which is apparently generating outrage in some quarters, along with death threats. Lycos email customer Whitney did not access her account for 30 days. This resulted in Lycos deleting over two years worth of email. It isn't so much Lycos' policy that's the problem (though that requires some scrutiny), but the response of the 'manager of all of Customer Service,' Mike Jandreau. Apparently he's not too service oriented, as his exchange with Whitney shows. And since this story was posted to The Consumerist, apparently Mr. Jandreau has become the focus of some unwanted attention. Of course, his final response to her might have something to with it: 'I'm sorry, no one here has any intentions of helping you with anything. I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. You violated our policy, which is, despite what you say, completely clear. No one is holding anything hostage. Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now restore them.'"

Comments

The Mail Nazi!

[Anonymous Coward]

No mail for you!!

Re:The Mail Nazi!

[operagost]

No. That law was passed to keep companies CURRENTLY UNDER INVESTIGATION from deleting email, not EVERY COMPANY AT ALL TIMES.

Thanks for keeping the dubya-bashing level high on Slashdot, though. I was afraid all the leftist freaks were on vacation simultaneously.

Outrageous

[Intron]

I would demand a full refund for this free service.

Re:Outrageous

[arth1]

I would demand a full refund for this free service.

Somehow, I doubt they will pay you back the amount the advertisers paid them on behalf of you.

Re:Outrageous

[mrcdeckard]

i agree the parent is +5 funny, however, it seems that some people actually believe that she hasn't a right to complain because the service was free. let's follow that logic for a moment:

i have a computer shop that offers a back up service for free (as an incentive to get people in the store to buy computers, eg). a customer uses it, say 6 months in the past. every 2 months i archive stuff off to a cheap medium, say dvd-r. customer comes back, says, hey, my hdd crashed, could you restore my old info to a new hdd. i tell him, "sure, oh by the way, you'll need to upgrade to a premium service for $19.99."

the customer gets irate, and no one can figure out why. even after i show him the original fine print, he feels cheated. why?

because he was under the impression it was a FREE service with no "catches". he entered the agreement with a trust -- a trust that i will venture to say was exploited. if i saw that he didn't read the agreement when he signed, did i point out to him that it would cost him $20 if he were to ever *use* the service?

of course not. he probably would've just bought a backup drive or something instead. by the same token, i bet the 30day provision was buried in the eula, which lycos bets no one reads (and they figure they don't both people that do as customers).

i think, as a business owner, i should be able to stand my ground, however underhanded it is. he did sign afterall. it's not my fault he had a general trust in people.

however, to respond how lycos did in this case is plain unethical -- i doubt there was language in the EULA that stated, "if user complains about any portion of agreement, lycos reserves the right to delete any and all of user's data."

mr c

corporatespeak

[udderly]

Of course, his final response to her might have something to with it: 'I'm sorry, no one here has any intentions of helping you with anything. I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. You violated our policy, which is, despite what you say, completely clear. No one is holding anything hostage. Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now restore them.'" Sounds like someone needs to brush up on their corporatespeak.

Re:corporatespeak

[mandelbr0t]

Yeah, not the best possible response, even if she was being exceptionally difficult. Let me give it a try:

"I am responsible for all decisions regarding Customer Service. At this time, we have followed our normal policy for free accounts. We offered you the opportunity to upgrade your account, which would have paid for one of our staff to restore your e-mails for you. However, since we didn't hear from you in 48 hours, the automated process has run normally and completely deleted your e-mail. It is absolutely unrecoverable. I'm sorry for your inconvenience, but we've provided the service that you signed up for. Please provide comments that will help us improve our service in the future if you wish. However, as the Manager of Customer Service for all of Lycos, I have decided that this particular case is closed and will provide no further reply to your questions and concerns."

Hmmm. Same thing, but not quite as confrontational. It still states the important bits: it was policy, we warned you, you ignored us, I'm the manager and I've decided to close this issue without further correspondence. "10/10 for effort, but minus a few points for style, ya?"

Re:corporatespeak

[risk one]

I don't blame the guy for talking this way. He's honest. Their service deletes email permanently if someone doesn't log in for a time, and when something like that happens they can offer nothing further. He's just being honest about the service. Of course, with a service like that, brutal honesty isn't a good tactic, but whenever honesty becomes bad policy, you need to review your service, not the way you talk.

Re:corporatespeak

[giminy]

I'm sorry for your inconvenience, but we've provided the service that you signed up for.

The word 'you' is used too much, as in the above sentence. I would recommend the following edit:

"Dear so-and-so, I am Such-and-such and am responsible for all decisions regarding Customer Service. At this time, we have followed our normal policy for free accounts. I would like to point out that we offered the opportunity to upgrade the account, which would have added the account to our backups and would have permitted a restoration. Unfortunately, we received no response in the 48 hours alloted per terms of the free account service agreement. As such, an automated process made room for other accounts by expuging the data. The process used makes the data unrecoverable. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Please provide comments that will help us improve our service for not only yourself, but also for our other valued customers. Sincerely, Such-and-such"

'You' is a very confrontational word. When in doubt, refer to the item at hand (e.g. 'the data' not 'your data', 'the account' not 'your account'). I especially like the sentence "The process used makes the data unrecoverable." You really have to unravel it to place meaning to it. "The process" oh, that was run by you guys, okay. 'the data'. oh, that was my account. Crap.

This sort of passivation makes eyes glaze over and also tricks our brains into not parsing the whole thing at a time. It's hard to associate bad guy A with doing bad thing B if both A and B are obscured behind intermediaries.

I add the last 'yourself' in there on the off-chance that the customer will come back. It doesn't hurt to leave the door open.

You can trust me, I work for the government (no, really, I do).
Reid

tupiche

[HomelessInLaJolla]

>Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now
>restore them.

I doubt this is true. There are probably more than a hundred different archives, tarballs, and tape backups from which they could salvage most, if not all, of the poor woman's e-mail.

If his sister/wife/daughter would "lose" her e-mail would he be so dismissive?

His statement is especially suspect when the original tech support answer
was

Should you want to restore the previous contents of your account, you
will need to upgrade to the Lycos Mail Plus service...Restoration is not
available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly
enforced. To have your account restored, you must upgrade, and pay the
$19.95 upgrade fee I guess the corporate mantra is: If extortion won't work then resort to extermination.

Sounds like my last three
employers.

Re:tupiche

[uglyduckling]

We run an Exchange system for about 19,000 people over eight backend Exchange 2003 servers. To restore a mailbox from one of those servers without affecting the production system (which requires coordination from three financially separate groups), we must: * Put up a new domain controller in a three domain forest * Make a backup of the DC * Move it to a private network without a connection to the domain * Put up a new Exchange back end server on the private network * Restore the information store * Export the mail to a PST file * Restore the backup of the DC and put it in DS restore mode * Return the DC to the network, allow replication to overwrite its db * Demote and decommission the DC Total time: estimated at 60 hours of work (20 hours, 3 people).

Which pretty much sums up why Exchange is totally unsuitable for use as a production mail server. I mean, come on - that's absolutely crazy. If it wasn't for the middle management obsession with shared calendars Exchange could be tossed out and something sane used.

Re:tupiche

[squiggleslash]

Seeing as some mods appear to believe this is flamebait, I'd just like to back you up on this.

"Mike" first of all offered to restore the mail, but for a $20 fee, which as the original writer pointed out, came across as extortion:

Should you want to restore the previous contents of your account, you will need to upgrade to the Lycos Mail Plus service...Restoration is not available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly enforced. To have your account restored, you must upgrade, and pay the $19.95 upgrade fee. This is non-negotiable.

Customer complained, pointing out how this felt and also making it clear that the "30 day login requirement" was not that clear, so it was an easy mistake to make. After a few exchanges on this subject, none of which amounted to an outright rejection of the above, this comes from Lycos:

I am the manager at Lycos. Your e-mail will not be restored, as it's been more than 48 hours since you were notified as to what you had to do. Our policy is clear, and clearly stated on the homepage, whether or not you choose to look at it. Nothing will be done for you.

So in the middle of discussions, Lycos decided to delete the mail anyway. Just in case there was any doubt, Mike took this one step further and wrote the following snide response:

I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. You violated our policy, which is, despite what you say, completely clear. No one is holding anything hostage. Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now restore them.

So, yes, Lycos deleted the mail for no apparent reason beyond being cruel for personal amusement. Clearly the account holder did want to hold on to them. Clearly there was no necessity to delete the mail. Mike felt that he should punish the account holder for daring to question the legitimacy of his $20 "offer". Did he need to? Nope.

Did Lycos have a legal right to? DOES IT FUCKING MATTER? The issue here is are Lycos being assholes (answer: YES!) and does Mike deserve some criticism for his personal, rude, unhelpful and unsympathetic response? Answer: Hell yes. The fact someone has a legal right to be an asshole is not reason to believe the person is beyond criticism, that the organization is not behaving attrociously, that complaining about it is somehow "wrong", or even that the victim has not been poorly treated.

What do you expect?

[RandoX]

Sounds like the Lycos servers wolfed them down.

Lycos is right, obviously

[JackHoffman]

If you get an email address from them, you agree to their policy, which is to delete email accounts that haven't been accessed in a while. The grace period is longer at other providers, but it is still a very common type of rule, simply because users never bother to remove old accounts. They would just pile up if there was no rule in place to delete accounts after some inactivity. In fact, I find it comforting that Lycos actually deletes email and doesn't keep it around forever. If I were offered the choice of two types of accounts, one which can not ever be deleted and one which expires after a month, I'd take the latter.

Before it starts...

[Apocalypse111]

Before too many people begin criticizing this woman for using a free email service and not following the terms of the account, let me just say that this is as much about them deleting her email as it is the responses she received from management. Go read the replies she got from the head of Customer Service. That kind of answer is totally unprofessional. There are words used to describe people who exhibit that kind of behavior, words akin to "douche bag" and "asshole". Personally, I was unaware that those were job titles used at Lycos...

Re:Exchange Link

[fyoder]

google cache

What?

[Colin Smith]

You mean this isn't how customer support is supposed to act?

p.s. The customer isn't always right, all too often the customer is wrong, stupid and loud with it.

Re:What?

[computational super]

the "no" should have sounded a little more like, "sorry, but no"

I must wonder, though, how many "sorry, but no" responses came before the "not so sorry, but no" response, but weren't represented in her blog. Remember, the customer service rep didn't get a chance to tell his side of the story.

What surprised me most

[snitmo]

Lycos still existed?

Backups not really required; logical delete.

[Kadin2048]

I think it's entirely possible that free accounts, of which there could be millions, offer no form of protection. Think logically the amount of storage that that would require for a small company like Lycos, and the likely small staff they have. I just can't imagine them having a massive backup system.

Except that, if I'm understanding what happened correctly, at one point after her email got deleted, they offered to restore it ... but only if she upgraded to the $20 premium service.

That was the beginning of the whole argument. She got mad because she felt that this was extortionate, and Lycos' Customer Service Manager basically revoked the offer and said "haha -- now you can't get it back even if you pay!"

So there was clearly a backup there at some point. Or not even a backup; they could have just logically deleted the data, but not physically deleted it yet. It wouldn't have appeared in her account, but it would have still be there on the servers somewhere. (A lot of web hosting companies do similar stuff; if you don't pay your bill, your site will disappear, but if you cough up it will reappear instantly. It wasn't actually deleted, just deactivated.) So it wouldn't be necessary for them to have much additional storage; they wouldn't need to keep a totally redundant backup system (though they probably would), just some feature in their email system that would let them render messages invisible to the user, but allow an admin or DBA to put them back later if the customer upgraded.

Re:Backups not really required; logical delete.

[tinkerghost]

That was the beginning of the whole argument. She got mad because she felt that this was extortionate, and Lycos' Customer Service Manager basically revoked the offer and said "haha -- now you can't get it back even if you pay!"

I can't read it since it's slashdotted, but if she was offered restoration for the upgrade price, and declined it, then it's entirely possible that the argument went on long enough to cycle her Emails out of the backup rotation. Given that Lycos offers both paid & unpaid services, I don't think it would be a stretch that the unpaid services were on a short backup schedule, with the paying customers having more recovery time.

I can't see the whole argument, but if her contact with Lycos CS was anything like the calls I would get doing tech support, it probably involved a lot of words that the FCC charges companies large amounts of money for using. She may just be posting the final notice after weeks of abusive behaviour. There does come a time when the answer "No, now go away & leave us alone" becomes the right one.

Someone failed their Charisma check.

[Canthros]

Having clicked through the Consumerist write-up to the aggrieved customer's blog, it looks like the customer in question is being almost deliberately obtuse and the write-up at Consumerist is misleading.

Whitney is complaining because she doesn't want to pay for an upgraded account to get her emails back (apparently, there's a policy on that: inactive accounts can recover mail lost that way by upgrading to a paid account--not that unusual, IIRC, a half-dozen years back, and undoubtedly a valuable revenue stream for Lycos). Reading between the lines a bit, she's probably made herself a PitA by demanding that the CSRs do something they have no ability to do. (Remember that the key to a business isn't keeping every customer: it's keeping the customers that are making you money. Free email accounts probably aren't making Lycos much money, especially ones that nobody is using.)

Yeah, Lycos looks like a bunch of jerks here. I'm not saying otherwise. But I find myself in disagreement with the Consumerist's claim that they owe her a paid service for nothing just because they're jerks. Sorry about your luck, Whitney: in the future, don't store your email with Lycos.

Free service

[Traa]

I expect several people to come up with the "thats what you get for using a free service" reply. I'm wondering what advise those people have when someone considers using a free operating system?

I just can't understand

[Jester@TheHouse]

What the hell has happened to personal responsiblity? Now the Customer service agent may have been gruff,(I haven't been able to read the blog due to it being dotted) but why can't people learn to understand the rules of the field here. They have their rules of deletion. She didn't follow them. They deleted them. They offer a service to retrieve them for a cost. She doesn't want to pay. What is the problem really here.

I think it is time that people in the IT field need to practice more tough love, this doesn't give us the right to be assholes, but computers are everywhere, in every part of life. The average joe needs to do this stuff for himself now. No more hand holding. What is it with the mindset that "oh I can just be clueless about everything, someone will sort it out for me"?

They offered to sort it out for her, for a cost. How were they to know she didn't abandoned the account?

And on the flip side again to my fellow IT grunts. Don't be asses, don't use unneeded technobabble (some is really needed sadly to properly communicate with others about computers though), and f'ing document things. Offer your info and insight to others, let them learn the rules of the field.

We all need to learn to be helpful not hapless.

Ok, Captain Angry Pants is going to rest now.

Re:Customer Service

[gurps_npc]

They are a customer. They pay with their attention, which Lycos sells to advertisers.

The fact that someone is not paying you cash does not change the fact that they are a customer.

It is NOT a free service, anymore than TV is free. Just as I have the right to call up and complain about NBC having stupid shows on, she has the right to call up Lycos and complain.

She may or may not have been a pain in the butt.

But a GOOD customer service rep handles pains in the butt all the time. A good customer service rep could probably find a way to fix this situation without having it get blasted all over the internet, which I assure you his boss is NOT HAPPY about. They are in the business of selling PR (ads) and that damn fool of a Customer Service Rep just gave his own business a whole bunch of negative PR.

Re:It is his fault

[Arathrael]

That wouldn't necessarily have helped. My hotmail account got marked inactive, and all the email in it wiped, despite my checking it at least once every couple of weeks.

According to their support people, their system thought I hadn't logged in for 30 days because opening it via msn doesn't count. Here's the exact quote:

Sign in to your account directly. You need to manually enter your password in the MSN Hotmail sign in page in order for our system to detect that you are still actively using your account. If you access your mailbox through MSN Messenger and others where you do not manually enter your password, our system will not be able to detect you actively using your account.

Oddly, I only ever check my hotmail via msn and this only happened once over a period of many years. Personally, I think they just delete random accounts occasionally for a laugh. Fortunately I never really trusted them to start off with so I didn't use it for anything serious. It was still annoying though.

Of course, the best bit of the response was where they suggested I subscribe to Hotmail Plus and said they looked forward to providing me with a 'consistent and effective service'...

Firing Customers

[king-manic]

Working in customer service, I can attest there are some customers that you should fire. These are the low to no profit customers who demands time and vastly over estimate their importance in the world. The ones who demand to speak to your VP or assume the media is interested in hearing of how the evil phone company cut their phone service just because they're 6 months behind on their bills.

At some point a customer demands more then their current and future business is worth and you have to set your foot down. I suspect Ms. Whitney is one of these, and the lycos rep put his foot down. It happens fairly often but with more diplomatic language in every company. There is simply a certain class of person who such a hassle to deal with that you want to direct them to yoru compitition.

How high is he?

[curtlewis]

There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. No one higher, eh? I guess he must be referring to drug usage because I'm sure he reports to someone.

I'm not aware of any company where the Manager of Customer Support is equivalent to CEO/Chairman...

I work in customer service

[hellfire]

His response sucked. I'm a supervisor and if I was his boss, I'd have severely reprimanded him. At the same time, I have no idea what their complete exchange was because the sites have been /.ed.

I will say this. If she's posting personal information and people are identifying him and sending death threats, I want this woman prosecuted, persecuted, and hung from her toenails. As a support rep, personally attacking someone and putting their life in danger is immoral and wrong on so many levels.

1) You singled out a peon who works at a big company, even if he is the supervisor. He doesn't make policy, he only enforces it. Blame the company, not a single person.

2) It's email. It's not a kidney transplant. You had a lot of opportunities to get it back, and it's not the end of the world. Okay, if one of the emails contains the formula for nuclear fusion or the location of your small child and you can't find it anywhere else, I'll understand. Otherwise get over it.

3) You want help? Take the high road. This is the low road. To said "he's a jerk and I'm making fun of you for ever and ever." How mature is that?

4) He's getting death threats. OMG I'm going to find YOUR address and YOUR picture and get a bunch of support reps to give you death threats, you stupid bitch, and see how you like it! Death threats are nothing to laugh at, and are completely over the top, no matter what he said about your email.

5) I'm shocked and amazed at people who torment support reps as incompetant, rude, and unsocial. Do you realize how much shit we get thrown at us every day and how hard this job is because people like this? The nicer you are to me, the nicer I am for you. I get people yelling at me every day, and I help them, but I don't wanna, and I can't help that feeling. When I call someone for service, and I never yell at the person on the phone. I know form personal experience that being nice is the way to go. Now you've completely ruined your chance at ever getting your email back because, when an asshole pissed you off, you decided to be an even bigger asshole.

He has every right to sue her, and I hope she gets taken to the cleaners. Yes I'm emotional about this because this is scary to me. You don't take out your petty problems on a support rep. The support rep is just a cog in a wheel. Keep it oiled and it will do the job, but don't take a wrench to it just because it won't do what the machine can't do.

Re:The real Mail Nazi!

[Harmonious Botch]

I run a business which deals with customers. In my 20+ years experience, 99% of customers are decent people. The other 1% are assholes. Unfortunately the good customers will do their business and leave, whereas the assholes seem to hang around. So at least 10% of your time is spent dealing with the assholes.

These assholes will make your employee's life a living hell if you don't allow your employee to protect himself. ( look at customerssuck.com for examples ) No employee will work for your company very long if you tell him that he must take shit from anybody 8 hours a day.

But a good customer service manager - and I mean the real boss, not the arrogant guy who claims to be the head of customer service - will train his people how to tell a customer to go away without getting embroiled in a pissing contest. ( Saying "I'm sorry that this happened..." is a good start. It's possible to empathize with a customer without admitting that the company is at fault. )

Yes, the customer was naive and foolish. Yes, the customer service rep was an asshole. But the real person to blame here is an unnamed manager who put this guy in customer service without proper training.

Re:The real Mail Nazi!

[computational super]

You think Lycos' customer service is bad? I just got an e-mail from Bank of America about how they need me to click through this link and verify my client information, and I don't even have an account there! I messed them up, though - I clicked through and input my account details with my actual bank account with Washington Mutual. That ought to confuse somebody in processing!

Re:The real Mail Nazi!

[Firehed]

umm, that's not really a serious post. You just got *wooshed*.

Re:The real Mail Nazi!

[gsn]

His initial mail -

...Should you want to restore the previous contents of your account, you will need to upgrade to the Lycos Mail Plus service...Restoration is not available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly enforced. To have your account restored, you must upgrade, and pay the $19.95 upgrade fee. This is non-negotiable. Here response -

So let me get this straight: you're holding my emails hostage until you get $19.95 from me? I checked your policies, and didn't see that listed. This hardly seems like a customer-friendly policy, especially toward someone like me, who has been with Lycos for several years. There were many times when Lycos was not in compliance with its own terms of service, and I didn't try to extort $19.95 from you. This is just the snippets she cut and pasted on her blog. Not the full emails. I'd love to see them. She sounds like she has already gone of on him in the first reply. Nothing about his initial email is rude or unprofessional. She on the other hand is rude and whining about their policies and accusing them of not being in compliance with their own terms of service (which they can arbitrarily change of course) and of extortion... over 20 bucks.

Now you might argue that she is a customer that thats hardly justification. A more compelling argument is that its his job to never lose his cool and always be polite. So he'll get fired over this. Which is a shame because in my book he tried to do his job and dealt with an angry customer the right way. People don't like it when your firm and clear with them and want things sugar coated. She wasn't worth it. She hasn't ever paid them a dime herself so her being a customer itself is debatable - user yes. She was eyeballs for advertising. She didn't backup her mail. She didn't feel that two years worth of email was worth logging in to check up on every thirty days. She didn't pay 20 bucks to get it back when she lost it. IMHO her email is rude and accusatory. No sympathy.

Re:The real Mail Nazi!

[paeanblack]

Now you might argue that she is a customer that thats hardly justification. A more compelling argument is that its his job to never lose his cool and always be polite. So he'll get fired over this. Which is a shame because in my book he tried to do his job and dealt with an angry customer the right way. People don't like it when your firm and clear with them and want things sugar coated. She wasn't worth it.

She also doesn't know how to get things her way.

Never let your first point of contact with customer service escalate the call if the problem is actually your fault. Keep trying different avenues of approach until you hit the soft spot. Push for empathy, and don't blame anyone or anything. Use phrases like "I've really found myself in a bind here, and I'm not sure who can help me out." Note the important implications of "found myself"="could happen to anyone", "in a bind"="not quite life-or-death", "I'm not sure who"=easy handoff for the stonewallers, and "who can help me out"="obviously someone can help me". There will always be some eager trainee that doesn't know or a jaded short-timer that doesn't care about corporate policy. Let them be your hero. If possible, target the opposite sex.

If you still can't find a way in, then politely escalate the issue. Never mention how many times you contacted them or what the other contacts told you. That's the difference between desperation and nagging.

Re:The real Mail Nazi!

[gsn]

Yes actually... as part of their premium $19.95 service. So aparently the ability to backup her mail isn't worth 20 bucks a year. They also have a 6 buck account preservation thing where your account wont get deleted. Also they've had POP access since 2002 http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is _2002_May_14/ai_85911533 i.e. before she got her account. And if her ISP gave her an email address she could have forwarded all incoming mail. Not easy but you'd have a backup.

so...
1) 2002, Company offers free service with additional features like account protection/backup capability at a price.
2) 2005, New customer signs up for free service without additional features that she sees no value to.
3) Two years on she loses all her mail because of the ToS of her free service.
4) She now sees value of additional features.
5) Emails customer support asks for help.
6) Is told please pay 20 bucks to get your mail back.
7) Despite apparent value of offer, she accuses company of extortion and refuses to pay.
8) She loses all her mail.
9) and gets told to FOAD by customer service rep.

Am I missing something?