If you didn’t already know, there was a botched SAN upgrade at Danger and since there was no backup in place, Sidekick users experienced catastrophic data loss. T-Mobile has already halted the sale of Sidekick handsets. This is just another example of the disregard Microsoft has for their customers and their customers’ data.
On Monday T-Mobile offered hope to some of their affected customers.
Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible.
T-Mobile has also offered a $100 “customer appreciation card” to those whose data is unrecoverable. Not exactly the best solution but at least they’re trying.
Whether they recovery the data or not, this is just out-and-out incompetence.
Previously:
10/9/09: Windows Mobile 6.5
Update 10/14/09: Daniel Eran Dilger writing for AppleInsider:
the fact that no data could be recovered after the problem erupted at the beginning of October suggests that the outage and the inability to recover any backups were the result of intentional sabotage by a disgruntled employee. In any other circumstance, Microsoft or T-Mobile would likely have come forward with an explanation of the mitigating circumstances, blaming bad hardware, a power failure, or some freak accident.
I still blame incompetence but this is an interesting theory.
Update 10/16/09: Roz Ho, vice president of Premium Mobile Experiences at Microsoft:
We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.
Update 11/19/09: T-Mobile has resumed sales of the Sidekick. I don’t know why anyone would purchase a device from Microsoft/Danger again but if you’re so inclined, you can do so.
