Why Atlassian deleted our business data?
Asked by airon-tark:

Hello, guys!

I have a situation. We did a project for a large company.  
I will not mention it, but I will say that it has 5,000 employees.  
We will finish the project and there was little delay before second phase.

Now we begin the second stage, and then we suddenly found that ....  
**OUR DATA WAS DELETED.**

(That post created after I talk to Atlassian by mail/ticket/phone and get answer  
that data is lost and there is no way to recover it)

Our account was expired 22 August, and now 27 Septeber and its deleted.  
Without real warning. We believe that this horrible treatment of customers.  
We are atlassian customers for several years, and used the downloaded software.  
And now we've decided to try it software onDemand for speed and ease of creating the project.

**Now I appeal to Atlassian and ask all you guys to support me.**

We stored in your cloud not a pictures of our dogs and cats  
No music and no home video. We stored here real documentation and  
real base ticket of a REAL service that really works, which  
supported people who get REAL salaries. This is REAL world and now it all deleted.  
We kept here VERY important business data.  
We kept there data on the project, which was developed for 8 MONTHS.  
And you know what? It was deleted for $10 debt and 5 days overdue.

**ITS CRAZY.**

We have ONE warning letter that our data will be deleted.  
We did not notice that, really. It\`s just little letter.   
But you can not delete IMPORTANT BUSINESS DATA after just one letter.   
This is monstrous.

My domain registrator before removing domain registration  
sends me a letter every day during a month. I\`ve got letters from him EVERY DAY.  
It says just "YOUR DOMAIN WILL BE DELETED AFTER _X_ DAYS"  
That's how you must work. I noticed it. I am sure that my domain will always be with me.  
But what happened to the data of my project that our team worked 8 months?  
It deleted. Not backuped. Not saved. IT DELETED.

**8 MONTHS DELETED FOR $10 DEBT AND 5 DAYS OVERDUE.**It\`s deleted after one letter where there was NO ONE BOLD/CAP LETTER.

We use JIRA on our server, and we know that it makes backups by default.  
Confluence also makes backups by default. It helps us a lot sometime.  
We keep them about a half of year.  
But now our data deleted because we were late for 5 days. FIVE DAYS.  
(We pay before August 22, the data is stored for months, today, 27 September)  
And you told us - no, your data is erased.

We ask you - make an exception for us.  
I'm sure that there are backup somewhere.  
Because you can not work like that. You can not delete other people's BUSINESS DATA without warning.  
**It's not ethical. It is illegal. It is confusion.**


Answers:
author: airon-tark
body: Ok, guys.  
**Our data restored now! :)**

It takes JUST 12 HOURS from our first letter to get all data restored.  

Personally thanks to **Ivan Maduro** from support and to **Douglas Butler** (product manager)  
Atlassian shows very highly professionality and client-oriented.   

**I love you guys and become your fan from now! :)**   

comments: author: Heath Burr
body: How did you go about getting it back? This just happened to me and I'm running into only dead ends for data recovery. I have offered a significant payment even and no luck.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: I'd suggest that rather than ranting here, you talk to Atlassian.

I strongly suspect that they have every right to delete your data the moment your support expires (so, yes, they CAN "delete other people's BUSINESS DATA", and you already admit that they DID warn you, so I'd say you're on a hiding to nothing on that front). It's pretty much contractual law here - you agreed to terms, and you've neglected to meet your side of the deal. It's not their fault you've misread or misunderstood the contract, or you've let your account lapse. It's perfectly legal (I very much doubt they'd have done this without checking with lawyers first). It's probably more "immoral" to agree a deal, let down your side of it, and then expect the other party to keep their side at their own cost!

I'd also take a guess that Atlassian have a backup and they almost certainly keep it for a very long time, unless *explicitly* instructed to destroy it for some reason.

Having said all of that,**please talk to them.** They're friendly, nice and helpful, and will almost certainly do what they can to reinstate your data, or at least get you a copy. If it's a genuine mistake on their part, they WILL deal with it. From what you've said, it's your mistake, but in my experience, they'll still try to help you.

comments: author: airon-tark
body: Hello, Nic!

Sure, before that post I talked to Atlassian support by mail, ticket and phone.  
And I get answer, that my data was deleted and there is no way to retreive it.

Despite the fact i mentioned that this data very important for us and we agree to pay additional fee to recover it.

By that post I just want to raise public awareness and get attention of Atlassian top management,  
that delelting someone else's business information is a very serious thing,   
and it can\`t be done without strongly attracting attention from the owner BEFORE that fact.

Yes, that is my fault that I misread the contact,  
but this is Atlassian fault, that customer got a lot of damage due the reason  
they did not warn him (me) carefully and strongly about important thing.

There are usually points, and there are important points.  
Important points must be written in **big red letters** .  
Otherwise people will misread it and got damage.

If my data will be restored finally - i\`ll be happy and will consider Atlassian highly   
professional and customer-oriented (what I considered them till that moment).


author: DouglasA
body: Hi Pavel,

I've already responded to your support ticket, so you're aware that your instance is back up and we're in the process of restoring your data.

I agree completely that this is a very serious thing, so I'm going to explain how the deletion policy works in the hope that it's clear to everyone who reads this. Full detail on this and related policies can be found in our [End User Agreement](http://www.atlassian.com/end-user-agreement/), specifically section 3 for hosted services. No one likes obtuse legal documents (including us), so we've strived to make the agreement as clear and easy-to-follow as possible.

If there's a problem processing your payment for the coming month (invalid/expired card, insufficient funds, etc):

* We send a notification immediately
* We send 2 more notifications that week
* There is a two week grace period following expiration to give you some time to get things sorted
* After two weeks, your service redirects to a page explaining it's disabled and how to fix it
* At the same time, we send a notification that your instance is deactivated
* The redirect remains in place for two weeks
* At the one month mark, we send a final notification

It's important to keep your contact details in [My Atlassian](https://my.atlassian.com) up to date. We know that everyone gets too much email these days, so we only send OnDemand notices when it's critical information about your account or service.  

We'll update you via the support case when your data restore is complete. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have additional questions or concerns: ondemand-pm \[at\] [atlassian.com](http://atlassian.com).

Cheers,  
Douglas Butler  
Product Manager

comments: author: Jose Nunez
body: Hi Douglas,

Can you please review my case?

We are in the same boat. The deactivation warnings were missed and we didnt get any notification/warning before our data was deleted.

In the above post you guys said that "At the one month mark, we send a final notification". This didnt take place.

Please help us!


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: This is a five year old question, so posting here really isn't likely to get you much response.

This particular question needs to be asked of support.atlassian.com as soon as possible, before your data goes out of the backup cycles.

I'd also want to question why the owner of your Cloud system ignored or did not get the warnings, as I know they were definitely sent. Spam filters on your end? The people named as contacts have left your organisation?


author: Jose Nunez
body: Thanks Nic for your comment.

I contacted Atlassian an after waiting for a week they said no.

I commented on this thread as it's the same situation, the account expired and the data was deleted. I did receive warnings about the deactivation, which I assume is our fault. We didn't get a warning before the data was deleted.

Ok, I'll create a new post in the community


author: Heath Burr
body: Same just happened to me. Been a 5-year customer and one month, all gone! I have also advocated Atlassian products for over a decade, including expensive integrations and plug-in, within multiple organizations and never would have thought in a million years they would do this to any company within such a short period of time... especially for the cost of storage these days.

This loss has been devastating for me personally and my consulting company and I can no longer have the enthusiasm for the Atlassian organization and suite of products as I once did.   

Heath Burr  
heathburr@grasp.tv


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Atlassian keep backups for quite a long time. If you let it lapse for too long, yes, I am sorry, but you can't get it back.

I've seen them recover from people who have not paid their bills for three months, and I suspect they go a lot further back.

But, I do not think it is fair for you to try to blame Atlassian for your failure to pay the bills you signed up for. It's not Atlassian's fault you ignored all the warnings and reporting for a month, you should have listened and renewed.


author: Heath Burr
body: Mine was within 30 days. And we all know that cards get compromised and some basic admin regarding the matter may be missed. If I could pay by PayPal this would have never happened. I don't think it is good business practice, especially at the level of which we integrate this platform into all of our projects and business. I have never let a domain lapse or lost DropBox.. because as others have mentioned they make a greater effort to keep a customer and understand the damage and this forum is live because this is happening with Atlassian.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: So why did you ignore all the warnings? There's not a lot more Atlassian can do, they already send plenty of warnings when you have not paid.


author: Heath Burr
body: Nic, I didn't ignore any warnings. I can send you the one or two emails that I get once a year at best that slid into my junk folder while launching an OTT app in Latin America. We are talking about 20 bucks overdue. I think I have made this obvious from my post. Especially when there were no lapses in payment for the last 5 years +. As I said, super lame business practice on behalf of Atlassian... surprised you can't see that.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: So, I get plenty of warning that subscriptions are to expire. I'm wondering if you're not named as the technical or billing contact?


author: Heath Burr
body: Yeah, not sure where the breakdown occurred but I am the only one listed on the account. : ( Obviously before Cloud we would have had backups and had the files on our own server. Cloud is obviously a great offering but when it allows your entire Wiki and Jira tracking to go down when you miss a payment isn't suitable for businesses. My files weren't that large and hosting a reasonable backup to regain my business would be a no brainer. I am actually pretty certain the backup exists there is just a refusal to offer the restoration.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: There is no backup that's suitable for restoring a single site - the backups Atlassian take are only for "disaster recovery" of a set of sites. In theory, you could restore form that, but you'd need to restore everything on a similar swathe of servers and then extract one site - probably costing thousands of dollars

I can't work out where the break-down in communications happened, I'm sorry.


author: Heath Burr
body: I would be interested in paying a few thousand if it was an option. Understood on the breakdown. I missed the two emails.

HB


author: Harry Chan
body: Hi, I'm not sure what happened, but they do have a 7 day retention policy for backups according to <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AOD/About+Your+Data>.

It also says once your account is deactivated they will retain your image for 15 days. Something's not right here even for overdue accounts.

As an Atlassian service hosting provider ourselves, we'd definitely not do what you've said. At a minimum, we'd send you multiple notices and retain your data for 7 days before removing it.

I'm sure Atlassian has a similar policy. Something must be admiss here.


author: ??
body: ???????


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud

jira-cloud

restore