"This response is unacceptable!"

I do customer tech support for a retail website. I recently had a customer call who was upset her shopping account was gone. When I looked her up in our order system I could see old orders but our account system showed nothing.

I spent two weeks contacting multiple departments trying to find why her account seemingly vanished. Eventually I found out the customer had requested to delete her account under the California Consumer Privacy Act.

I sent her an email explaining why the account was gone and that it was truly gone and couldn’t be recovered. I get a response “I didn’t know it would delete everything! This is an unacceptable response!”

This process isn’t a simple click a button and it’s gone. The customer has to submit a request, prove it’s their account, and agree to have their data deleted over the phone and in email.

The customer never thought to mention she’d made such a request, either.

TL;DR customer asked to delete all her data and is mad we did it.