timmmay: That's appalling, just unacceptable service, and the lack of backups is inexcusable. If they had a disk outage what would they do, ask all their customers to recreate? Telecom corporate really need to be made aware of this, or go to the telecommunications commissioner if they ignore you.

I don't think anyone could reasonably have predicted that transferring a domain would cancel hosting. I've transferred plenty of domains between hosts and it's never happened.

timmmay: That's appalling, just unacceptable service, and the lack of backups is inexcusable. If they had a disk outage what would they do, ask all their customers to recreate?

insane: Just sitting next to someone who used to work in the team responsible these systems, he said this sounds like someone is just not wanting to get the backups from tapes as they do take backups. Or at least did in the past.

mattwnz: I am aware of at least one host that does stop backing up if you have more than a certain number of files in the account, they exclude it from the backups. This is all in their fine print, which many people don't read. I presume when they have a server failure, the cusomter would have to reupload all their data back onto the server.

I am sure they do backups. Infact I would be surprised if the data had been deleted. I think it is just the DNS settings that were deleted, so that their servers know that the domain is hosted elsewhere. They probably just need to add back the www records.

MackinNZ:

I am sure they do backups. Infact I would be surprised if the data had been deleted. I think it is just the DNS settings that were deleted, so that their servers know that the domain is hosted elsewhere. They probably just need to add back the www records.

It would be wonderful if this were true but try as I may I can't get the call escalated to anyone who can/will help.

I would love it if one of the Telecom GZ's would offer some help.

Meanwhile the original developers of the site are bending over backwards to help, unfortunately they didn't have a copy of the site either, but the have managed to mostly recreate it from the wayback machine.

MackinNZ:

I am sure they do backups. Infact I would be surprised if the data had been deleted. I think it is just the DNS settings that were deleted, so that their servers know that the domain is hosted elsewhere. They probably just need to add back the www records.

It would be wonderful if this were true but try as I may I can't get the call escalated to anyone who can/will help.

I would love it if one of the Telecom GZ's would offer some help.

Meanwhile the original developers of the site are bending over backwards to help, unfortunately they didn't have a copy of the site either, but the have managed to mostly recreate it from the wayback machine.

mattwnz: No, you should be able to escalate it to their management. Otherwise ask for a 'deadlock number' from their call centre, and go to the TDR, at www.tdr.org.nz to see if they can do anything.

It didn't sound like you were in the position to backup, were you? Were you also looking after the website?

Surprised that the telecom people who did reply to this thread , didn't look into this.

Kyanar:

mattwnz: No, you should be able to escalate it to their management. Otherwise ask for a 'deadlock number' from their call centre, and go to the TDR, at www.tdr.org.nz to see if they can do anything.

It didn't sound like you were in the position to backup, were you? Were you also looking after the website?

Surprised that the telecom people who did reply to this thread , didn't look into this.

Depends how large the client in question is.  If they're 20 employees or more, then you're out of luck and TDR aren't interested.

plambrechtsen: UPDATE: I have found someone in Telecom Business Hub who can help, just need the OP to contact me :)