1&1 IMAP nightmare!

Scenario: A business uses 1&1 for website and email. They have their email account set up in Outlook 2003 as IMAP. They have masses of email in there, much of it business critical, in dozens of folders. They then transfer the domain to another ISP, deleting email account settings at the same time. Same day (today), 1&1 telephone support say because the domain and email are now not with them they have no way of accessing any email and that there is no backup. The business are currently desperately trying to find the original welcome email from 1&1, sent to a family member's account originally, in the hope that the user ID number they had may allow 1&1 to retrieve access to their email account.

Anyone else had an experience like this, with 1&1 or other, and is there anything else that can be done? The business is still technically paying 1&1 as their account renewal was nearly but not quite due.

Surely 1&1 must have a record of user ID numbers somewhere, and surely they can't actually zap all stored email for this user until their contract expires, regardless of the domain being transfered?

thanks

 

Bad move, you lost your emails and it is your responsibility to keep track of backups, not the hosting company that you're with. The majority of hosts never keep backups, looks like your going to have to send a mass mail explaining to your customers what happened.