That does not strike me as believable - do you really not have the list elsewhere, and does every provider who shuts down not give you the option to get your list out?
Am I responsible for backups ultimately? Absolutely. Will I trust Mailchimp in the future for my own projects? Not very likely.
> We're afraid the TinyLetter data is no longer available
could perfectly mean: the backups we keep for one year are encrypted in case of legal trouble, but we require a legal action internally before them to be worth reaching out.
If it makes you feel better, deliverability people will tell you a list that’s been sitting with no sends for a year or more quickly becomes worthless due to list rot (abandoned emails, expired domains, job switchers, people who forgot you exist and will mark spam/unsub, etc).
When you send to an old untouched list, it can tank your domain rep in Gmail since the algo sees tons of bounces/unsubscribes/negative signals. They basically assume you’re a spammer. So it probably would have been a PITA to warm that list again anyways. It’s shitty that gmail incentivizes bulk senders to be annoying and send a lot, but it is what it is.
I've never had an email delivery company return any communication at all once they have decided you're bad. (0% spam report rate, 0.01% bounce rate)
Don't expect them to support a free service they decided to shutdown in anyway.
I strongly disagree. I’ve had the chance to speak with numerous deliverability folks who work at esp’s over the years and they’ve all for the most part been incredibly professional and helpful.