I didn't use Dropbox Plus for over a year and now I'm missing 12000 files

Professor Twang wrote:

I didn't use Dropbox Plus PAID plan for just over a year

Did you pay for the account, or, did you stop paying? 

If you DIDNT pay and it was over a year the files are not recoverable once deleted I am afraid - as the emails say. 

If you DID pay have you used the Card Lookup tool to check what account was upgraded so you can check if its a different account? Or, have you checked http://www.dropbox.com/events ?

Professor Twang wrote:

I didn't use Dropbox Plus PAID plan for just over a year, and Dropbox deleted nearly all my 12,000 files.

If you're on a paid plan, within your quota and there are no billing issues, then Dropbox wouldn't delete your files. Dropbox would only delete files if you're over quota for an extended period of time, and they would notify you several times before doing so.

If you're on the Basic (i.e. free) plan and your account remains idle for more than a year, then the account and all files are deleted due to inactivity. Again, Dropbox would notify you several times before this happens.

What does your Events page show? Is there any activity for your files, or is it mostly blank as if it's a new account?

Are you sure you're signed in to the correct account? Check your various email accounts for messages from Dropbox. You should have renewal notices for your paid account. When you identify that email account, make sure that's the one you're signing in with.

You can also use the credit card charge lookup tool to identify the account that you're paying for.

Hey Professor Twang, thanks for the heads up!

Happy to see that your issue is now resolved! 

If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way. 

While my complete file recovery is certainly fabulous news, Megan, I now await some insights into how and why that even happened. Meaningful dialogue via the chat support team has been cordial but unproductive. I have a lot to say about the quality of Dropbox support and especially their essentially walling themselves off from direct help to users/customers. If you have insights to all those issues, I'd love to hear it, since I never know if I will hear anything from normal customer support. Thomas from Plus Plan Support came out of the blue like a tech Superman with everything remedied! I think Dropbox needs to take a few pages from Apple's support model.---John

Hi Professor Twang, as we don't have any visibility into account-specific issues, it would be best to continue via the support team for them to see what could've occurred in relation to your files.

In general, this thread does give numerous examples into how files could be deleted from your Dropbox account, which might provide some insight for you.

Hi Professor Twang​ , and welcome to the Dropbox Community 🌟.

I’m so sorry to hear about the missing files, I know how stressful that must feel, especially when you’ve been away from the service for a while. It’s really great to see that you got the issue resolved 💪.

By the way, I’m Theresa, one of the community managers here at Dropbox HQ 👩‍💻. You’ll see me around the forums, chatting with members like yourself and helping out wherever I can.

I’d love to hear… is there a Dropbox feature you find especially helpful in your day to day? It’s always fun to hear what folks are using!

Looking forward to hearing more from you,

T 😺 (Dropbox Community Manager)