Charter Accidentally Wipes 14K Email Accounts

dacut writes with the sad news that Charter Communications, which provides cable and Internet access to 2.6 million customers, accidentally and irretrievably wiped out 14,000 active email accounts while trying to clear out unused accounts. They're providing a $50 credit to each affected customer, which seems a paltry sum for anyone who was less than diligent about backing up their email — though those who relied on Charter's webmail interface had no easy way to accomplish backups. From the article: "There is no way to retrieve the messages, photos and other attachments that were erased from inboxes and archive folders across the country on Monday, said Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for the suburban St. Louis-based company. 'We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error,' Lamont said Thursday when the company announced the gaffe."

Comments

Re:Standard statement...

[Otter]

I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Users are absolutely entitled to expect that their provider doesn't delete their mail with no backups available. That's the whole point of using a webmail service, that Google or whoever takes professional-grade responsibility for your data!

I see no reason why bytes are any more "volatile" in an IMAP file than anywhere else.

Re:Crap

[Michael O-P]

You have got to be kidding me. I was going to moderate this as idiocy, but I decided to elaborate with a response instead.

One might be able to reach a person at Charter, but a helpful person? Not on your life. You speak about behemoth corporations, and Charter embodies the worst of corporate bureaucracy. They are total idiots, the left hand doesn't talk to the right hand, and their prices are unreasonable. And yes, I dumped them as soon as I could so I don't have to deal with them any more. But not once did I deal with a helpful person.

And deleting 14,000 email accounts just shows the heights of stupidity this company has achieved.