Why did you pay someone? I guess because you lack the skills to fix it yourself.

Did you come to this forum to ask for free help? No.

You use free software and expect someone to pay your computer repair bills? Now that is comedy!

Firstly, I resent the tone of your response. You add insult to inuury by your rudeness and sarcasm. Who are you? I notice you did not supply a name. That would be useful to me.

I happily admit, I do not own the skills to resolve computer problems. Why should I need to? I am a 68 year old female, retired Graduate language teacher, (English and Literacy, as well as Modern Foreign Languages), and when you can illustrate a grasp of the French and German languages equal to my own, then perhaps you can sit in judgment of my computer abilities. Every individual has their own particular talents to express - whatever they may be. That is the problem with the computer generation - they have forgotten what it is to be able to communicate civilly - with people (not machines) and believe that their "science" is all that matters. Well, believe me, it isn't. And there are many others like me who have talents and skills equally, if not more, worthy than those pertaining to computers. You disgrace the organisation which you represent by your insulting and sarcastic response - and there was no intention on my part, I can assure you, to provide comical amusement to someone who is so obviously arrogant and bored with their lot. No doubt, your response provided you with the sense of superiority which you so obviously crave. For my part, it merely illustrates the inferiority of the quality of the customer service provided.

H. Whittaker

Here is your wakeup call. Mozilla has very little to do with Thunderbird anymore. Volunteer programmers work to provide people like you a free email client. Volunteers like me donate their time to help users that have problems. I could care less what your background is. If you have a question about using Thunderbird I will be happy to help. If you just want to complain and make ludicrous claims of damages using free software, I am not interested.

I don't require your wake-up call. The existing relationship between Mozilla and Thunderbird hasn't, as far as I am aware, hit the headlines of the British Press of late - (and the verb 'provide' requires to be used with the preposition 'with').

I HAD a problem. A Thunderbird update eradicated my entire Inbox. That IS a problem, wouldn't you say?

I think you meant you could NOT care less what my background is. Still, important for you to know that I am someone with an intellect.

More to the point - still no name, still rude. Employee or volunteer - it matters not - civility costs nothing and the lack of it leaves this person hugely unimpressed.

H. Whittaker

I will keep you in mind when I need my resume updated for free. And if I do not get the job after using your services I will have my attorney call you about the damages. But this exchange is as boring as your expectations of payment are laughable so I think I am done here.

Really? Then I'll finish by saying this. YOU are the face of the company you (say you) represent - a company which would do well (it seems) to invest a little of its accumulated wealth in educating its "workers" in the areas of customer relations and interpersonal communication. IT skills may be in super-abundance amongst its "workforce", but, if you are representative of it, then other essential (personal) skills are clearly lacking. You have been rude and arrogant in your addressing of my enquiry (and all the evidence is here) and your attitude of simply attempting to belittle the correspondent, as well as your sarcasm in dealing with the original enquiry, reflects sadly, and poorly, on you as a person and the company. Not once have you even proferred any explanation as to why a Thunderbird Update eradicated my Inbox - and that is what you are (supposedly) there to do - to shine some light on problems which might arise. You chose instead to attack and ridicule me - and I feel very sorry for you and for the fact that that was your chosen method of addressing a problem I raised.

The money is not an issue for me - the 'principle is. I am left wondering whether you have any concept of the word.

Now ... I think you need to take a vacation.

H. Whittaker

All information that is held on your computer is your responsibility.

You are perfectly entitled to pay for any assistance you require regarding your computer, but that is your decision and you decided to use that approach. Nothing is wrong with your decision.

You can also post questions in this Free forum to see if someone can offer free assistance. Please rememeber that the person(s) offering help is doing this for free in their free time under no obligations.

Please keep to the topic as anything else is just ignored as not relevant.

re :I should like to forward my Invoices and Receipts for payment to "Response Computing Services" here in North Yorkshire, to the Mozilla Corporation for reimbursement, and would greatly appreciate someone providing me with the correct contact details so that I may do this.

You use a Free program which you chose to download and use. Your computer and your data are your responsibility. So in a nutshell, the information you require does not exist.

Your question has been answered and now to move on to what is really the more important issue.

How can we help you? Please provide some information so we can offer some advice or knowledge to help should you have a similar incident.

Do you have a pop or imap mail account or several accounts?

What backups do you perform? I'm presuming you perform regular backups of your Thunderbird profile.

If IMAP, do you synchronise folders for offline use prior to making backups? Do you perform manual backups or use a tool to perform these backups? Do you have Thunderbird set up to auto update or set to inform you and ask to perform the update?

Thank you for your response. I know nothing was wrong with my decision. The emphais being placed on people providing a service for free does not entitle them to be offhand and impolite. Sorry. Not in my book.

Thank you for offering to help. Unfortunately, the best person to answer the questions you pose me is my husband who is presently 400 miles away, and from Wendesday, in India. I shall retain all correspondence between us for his return, and he can then perhaps pick up from where we leave off here, and provide you with all the information you require, in anticipation of such a thing happening again. As explained earlier, I do not "tech-speak", my own language preferences being French and German, Spanish and Russian. For your information, I did not choose to download and use the FREE programme which is at the centre of this exchange. My husband did, so he will be much better placed than I to follow through on what you require to know.

Thank you for your time. H. Whittaker

No worries. When he returns, ask him to use this forum question if he wishes to proceed with gaining some information to help with backups etc.

Keeping at least one email will provide him with a link to this forum. Alternatively, you could bookmark this page. All the best.

Thank you.

I shall bookmark this page as you suggest and my husband Craig will get back to you in about a month's time.

Kind regards, H. Whittaker

Hi H. Whittaker,

Sorry if this question thread did not get off to good start.

I am on the same side of the pond as you and I can understand you may not have been aware that firstly Mozilla software is Free as in Free Beer and secondly Thunderbird itself is now community run software with very little support from Mozilla.

Links that may be of interest for background info

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird
  • https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/

At least for now this forum tries hard to offer support to users or Thunderbird based on the time and effort of volunteers.

Your request for compensation probably would not have any chance of success and was at least rather overoptimistic. Paying £130 for some professional to help you may well have been a reasonable decision, and the sort of thing many people do to get computer or IT problems fixed.

This forum will try to offer free help. Please note however that after a certain time the forum software does close inactive questions, and they become read only. By all means bookmark this thread, but depending on how long it is before your Husband returns from India you may need to start a new question. if that happens quoting the bookmarked link will to some extend save you from having to repeat information.

I probably should not need to say this but Thunderbird updates are not expected to cause loss of information. Unfortunately It is however your responsibility to backup the information on your computers.