Lycos Deletes Emails and Says 'Too Bad!' 513
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.'"
Lycos is right, obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
Before it starts... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is the policy, they didn't follow it. (Score:3, Interesting)
The customer got pissed, because to her, this looked like extortion (although, it's probably legit), and apparently said as such to the Customer Service Asshole.
The Asshole, rather than just toeing the company line and saying "well, I'm sorry, but that's our policy -- now cough up the $20 if you want your email back, peasant" decided to go on a power trip, and said that her email was now permanently, irrevocably deleted, and that nothing -- even upgrading -- would ever bring it back.
So they did make her the offer to restore it at one point, for a fee, but then something happened (whether it was the Asshole actually deleting it, or something else, like a deadline to re-up) and the offer went away.
It's the taking-back of the offer to recover the emails that's so suspicious. Requiring you to pay a fee to get your expired emails back is sleazy, but not that unexpected. As you point out, a lot of places do it. But what's far sketchier, is when they say they can recover it for a fee, but then abruptly change their story and claim that it's physically deleted.
Re:It is his fault (Score:2, Interesting)
All account users will not always have access to their accounts within 30 days. Accidents, illnesses, vacations, jail time, power outages, disasters, and missed bill payments. While it is nice to have a free mail account it's bridging on fantasy to work with a short account login turnaround. Forgetfulness is the fault of the user, but completely deleting all files and parading around the fact they can't be recovered (even for a free account) is just nasty.
Though in the end the true lesson is: back your mails up if they mean something to you.
Re:Just a classic whiner being told "no"... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing that changes behavior is accountability. Facing the consequences of your decisions is always painful. Some people learn from the mistake, some people try to weasel out of it. It's fairly obvious which type of person she is, and I wouldn't be surprised if you, too, fell into the same category.
It always amazes me just how much people will whine when *free* services don't meet their expectations...
Re:Free service (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mixed feelings here... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It is his fault (Score:5, Interesting)
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: 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'...
Re:Just a classic whiner being told "no"... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the idea of trying to get what you can... but there's a point where you're just being a free-loading parasite, and if *I* had acted the way she admits to acting, I'd feel like I had crossed that line.
I also suspect that she wasn't entirely forthcoming with *her* side of the story... I wouldn't be surprised to find that she was even more obnoxious than she admitted to, but we'll probably never have a complete transcript of both sides, so I can only go on what she says.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:The real Mail Nazi! (Score:2, Interesting)
Hotmail did similar stuff to me which was very annoying and lost me a few years of email. I've just moved to using Gmail instead. My hotmail account is still used a lot but not much important stuff happens there - it's just for stuff where I expect to be spammed.
Re:corporatespeak (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Backups not really required; logical delete. (Score:1, Interesting)
Perhaps, perhaps not. He's upset at the attention and demanded the Consumerist take down his photograph [consumerist.com], and while he's claimed he's received death threats and people have shown up at the office looking for him in his message, he says this at the end:
Now the photograph in question came from here [moviesnobs.net] and is still up at the moment. I'm also not aware of any federal law that makes it illegal to post a photograph of someone in general. Copyright might apply, but he mentions it nowhere in the message. So basically he's trying to scare them into taking it down. Still think he's not an "insincere, two-faced, backstabbing PHB"? I'd say he's proving quite well that the original quote was exactly what he said. That he thinks he can stop the negative attention he's brought on himself by being more of a jerk (using baseless threats) really proves the point quite well.
And do note that the Consumerist put this at the TOP of the page, not after the guy's letter:
So they're discouraging people from doing the types of things (death threats) that very well might violate a federal law or two.