A software error during routine maintenance at Charter Communications in St. Louis erased the email accounts of 14,000 of its customers last week. There is no way to recover any of them.
When a new Internet user joins Charter, the company provides the user a free e-mail account. However, some users don't activate it, so every three months the company deletes inactive accounts.
During last weeks maintenance, Chareter erroneously deleted active accounts along with the others.
Said a spokesperson for Charter: "It's never happened before. They are taking steps to make sure it never happens again."
"We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error," she said.
In 2007, Charter was named Cable Operator of the Year by CableWorld Magazine. I wonder if this will keep them out of the running for 2008.
