T-Mobile Sending $100 Gift Card To Sidekick Data-Loss Victims

After admitting that they could have lost every scrap of Sidekick users' online data, T-Mobile USA are now following up on their promise of "additional measures" to make it up to affected customers.  The carrier is now more hopeful of restoring lost data than it was at the weekend – when it described the likelihood of recovery as "extremely low" – but any user facing a loss will automatically get a $100 T-Mobile gift card.

That gift card can be used to buy accessories or anything else from the carrier, or put toward payment of a bill.  We're wondering whether it's valid toward early termination fees; many Sidekick users are talking about abandoning the platform altogether after this most recent incident.

T-Mobile have already given all Sidekick users a month of free data service as apology for last week's outages.  The data loss has been blamed on a poorly managed upgrade to the Sidekick data servers by Microsoft and Hitachi.

T-Mobile Statement:

T-MOBILE STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION, MON., OCT. 12

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

We are thankful for your continued patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on preserving platform stability and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers. We have made significant progress this past weekend, restoring services to virtually every customer. Microsoft/Danger has teams of experts in place who are working around-the-clock to ensure this stability is maintained.

Regarding those of you who have lost personal content, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger continue to do all we can to recover and return any lost information. Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible. We will continue to keep you updated on this front; we know how important this is to you.

In the event certain customers have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content, T-Mobile will be sending these customers a $100 customer appreciation card. This will be in addition to the free month of data service that already went to Sidekick data customers. This card can be used towards T-Mobile products and services, or a customer's T-Mobile bill. For those who fall into this category, details will be sent out in the next 14 days – there is no action needed on the part of these customers. We however remain hopeful that for the majority of our customers, personal content can be recovered.

Sidekick customers can continue to visit T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick) on a regular basis to access the latest updates, as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption. The Forums also offers tips and suggestions for rebuilding content on your device.