123-reg, the company which hosts over 1.7 million websites in the UK alone, and even more across Europe, is facing a customer revolt after inadvertently deleting a raft of sites after a botched clean-up operation.
The company said an error made during maintenance “effectively deleted” what was on some of its servers, although it has refused to say how many websites had been deleted, insisting it was a “small proportion”.
At the least, hundreds are in trouble; some claim it could be thousands. The only reported high-profile victim so far has been Scottish League Cup winners Ross County, whose site has been deleted, causing a major headache for ticket sales.
123-reg has started a “recovery process”, but advised customers with their own data back-up to rebuild their own websites. It told the BBC it did not have a backup copy of all its customers’ data, but was working with a data recovery specialist to “manage the process of restoration”.
“We always recommend that customers implement backups to safeguard against unexpected issues,” the company said.
The company’s advertising strapline of “customer service you’ll go crazy for” would appear to be a little wide of the mark as would its cloud storage boast of being “Easy. Simple. Clear”. 123-reg has been inundated with messages on social media criticising its limited communication.
One customer noted: “This will wreck my business and plenty of others.” The fault was limited to 67 servers out of 115,000 across Europe, the company said.
“We are investigating on a case-by-case basis and are working individually with customers to keep them informed of the website recovery process,” it added.
