"Stolen bases" - anyway to recover?

[erin_Sheehan1]

I was contracting for a company added a person as a collaborator (not owner) in my paid workspace. When I left, that person removed ALL my bases (my personal ones and ones related to other work).

I know it was my fault - I didn’t realize people other than owners could remove the entire contents of someone’s workspace. Will not repeat that mistake.

Airtable says it has to be returned from that person, but that person won’t return calls/ emails. I followed up with Airtable explaining the situation, last week but have not heard back.

Anyone know of

• A way to get them back
• A way to call Airtable

[Bill_French]

erin_Sheehan1:

that person removed ALL my bases

@ScottWorld Is this really possible?

[kuovonne]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

So sorry to hear that happened to you!

@Bill.French I’m not Scott, but this is possible. Anyone who is a creator in the workspace can delete bases in the workspace (or move them to a different workspace, thus unsharing them from the original owner). As far as I know, it has to be done manually (one base at a time), and when moving the base to a different workspace you get a warning that the base will not longer be shared with the previous collaborators.

I do not know of any way to get the bases back without the assistance of whoever took the bases. There is no “workspace trash”.

[Bill_French]

kuovonne:

I’m not Scott

How fortunate for you. :winking_face:

kuovonne:

Anyone who is a creator in the workspace can delete bases in the workspace (or move them to a different workspace, thus unsharing them from the original owner)

Right, I was afraid of that. This is just nuts. There should be no way to make anyone a “creator” except the creator. There are owners and editors - this model is just crappy.

[kuovonne]

Bill.French:

There should be no way to make anyone a “creator” except the creator.

Only creators and owners can make other creators. My understanding is that the main difference between creators and owners are that owners are responsible for billing, not creators, and every workspace must have at least one owner.

[Bill_French]

kuovonne:

owners are that owners are responsible for billing, not creators

Yeah, this is a convoluted approach. The owner of the account has little to do with ownership of the data. In this sense, an administrator has responsibility for billing and administrators may also “own” certain data assets by virtue of having created them. This makes it possible - for example in the Google vernacular - to transfer ownership of an artifact - but there is never more than one owner.

Whatever they use in terms of vernacular, it should be impossible for the creator of a base to lose control of said base unless taking specific steps to transfer ownership and control of said base to another user specifically selected to assume such ownership.

The title of this post is also in conflict with reality - the bases weren’t stolen; they were given away in a manner the user was unaware was possible. This must have been a big surprise.

Rule #1 in CX - never surprise users unless it’s something good.

[erin_Sheehan1]

Thanks Bil & Kuovonne

Yes - not exactly stolen as they had the access. But just because you invite someone into your house, it’s still stealing when they walk out the door with things that were not given to them.

There is definitely a big gap between “editor” and “creator”. Normally I never give people “creator” status, but editors cant update fields, and this person insisted, so next step up is creator where they can basically do everything except for billing. The fact that AT does not alert the account owner that every base was removed is unnerving, or even allow you to “lock” a base so it can’t be removed.

I love AT - but the customer service response has just been to say that they now belong to the other person. I don’t know how as a company, they can still allow this other person to keep this work in their account, and still be allowed to have an active AT account. I know its my fault for giving them access, but as a long-time paying customer, you would think AT would intervene somehow, especially since I assume it was done out of spite that I quit, because some bases were work related but they also removed my dogs medical history, my home repair, birthday tracker, etc.