Account Suspended or Scheduled for Deletion

How to Recognise This

A locked account does not look like a broken agent. Every device keeps running, keeps its schedule, and keeps talking to the server — but each run stops the moment it tries to start, and it fails the same way on every machine at once. That “all devices, all at once” pattern is the tell: a network, disk, or permissions problem hits one device, an account state hits all of them.

[backup] starting set "Documents" (device 4f1c…)
[backup] POST /functions/v1/backup-job-track -> 403
[backup] This account is scheduled for deletion. Contact support to restore it before backing up.
[backup] run aborted (0 files uploaded)

Signing in to the Customer Portal confirms it. A locked account shows a banner at the top of every page — either Your account is suspended or Your account is scheduled for deletion — and most sections are replaced by a “This section is unavailable” panel.

The Two Locked States

There are two separate states, and they need different fixes. Both lock the account immediately, for the owner and for every invited team member alike.

• •Suspended — the account is on hold. The usual causes are an unpaid or failed invoice, a suspension date that your provider scheduled in advance, or a deliberate administrator action. The portal banner shows the reason when one was recorded.
• •Scheduled for deletion — the account is inside a grace window that ends with permanent erasure. Either an administrator scheduled the deletion, or the account owner requested it from the portal. Nothing has been erased yet.

What Stops and What Keeps Working

The lock is deliberately narrow. It stops the account taking on new data and it stops the parts of the portal that cannot function on a locked account — but it leaves everything you need in order to fix the situation.

• •Stops: new backup runs. The server refuses to start a job, so scheduled and manual runs both fail immediately. Already-running jobs are allowed to finish and report their result rather than being stranded as "running" forever.
• •Stops in the portal: the Dashboard, Devices, Sites, Files, Restore, Restore Assistant, Activity, Team, Requests and Download. They stay visible in the sidebar with a padlock rather than disappearing, and opening one shows a "This section is unavailable" panel.
• •Keeps working: signing in. You are not locked out of your account — you are locked out of most of what is inside it.
• •Keeps working: Billing and invoices, so you can pay and reinstate, and pick a plan or add services.
• •Keeps working: Reports and Usage Reports, so you can still see what was backed up and how much storage you are using.
• •Keeps working: Support, so you can reach a human, and Settings, which is where a pending deletion is cancelled.

Your Backup Data Is Not Deleted

Neither state destroys anything on its own. Suspension is a pause: every chunk, manifest, and version stays exactly where it was, and the moment the account is reinstated the next scheduled run picks up where it left off — incrementally, not as a fresh full backup.

A scheduled deletion is a countdown, not an erasure. For the whole grace window every database row and every stored object is retained, so the account can be restored with all of its backups intact. Erasure happens once — at the end of the window — and only then.

The 30-Day Grace Window

Scheduled deletions default to a 30-day window. The portal banner shows the exact erasure date and the number of days remaining, so you never have to work it out from when the request was made.

• •Day 0 — the account locks and new backups start failing. Nothing is deleted. If an administrator scheduled it, every active session is signed out as well.
• •Days 1 to 29 — the account sits locked but completely intact. Cancelling at any point returns it to exactly the status it had before the request.
• •Day 30 — every stored object for the account is deleted from cloud storage and the account itself is removed. Backups, versions, history, and devices go with it.
• •After day 30 — there is no recovery. Support cannot undo it, because nothing is left to restore from.

Getting Back to Normal

# Read the exact server response behind the failure
backupengine agent logs --tail 50

# A locked account produces a 403 with one of these two messages:
#   This account is scheduled for deletion. Contact support to restore it before backing up.
#   This account is suspended. Settle any outstanding balance in the customer portal to restore access.

# After reinstating the account in the portal, force a run to verify
backupengine backup start "Documents"
backupengine backup status

If You Requested the Deletion Yourself

Account owners can request deletion of their own account from the portal, from the Delete account card at the bottom of Settings. It uses the same 30-day window as an administrator-scheduled deletion: the account locks straight away, all data is retained for the full window, and you can cancel it yourself at any point before the window closes.

• •Only the account owner can request deletion. Team members cannot delete the account they were invited into.
• •The request asks you to type your own account email as confirmation, which is there to catch mis-clicks.
• •There is no self-serve "delete immediately" — the cooling-off window is not optional on the customer side.
• •To call it off, return to Settings and cancel the deletion, or use the Cancel deletion button on the banner.

Before You Contact Support

Support can tell you why an account was locked and, where appropriate, reinstate it. Having these three things ready turns it into a single reply instead of a thread.

• •The account email, and whether you are the owner or a team member.
• •The exact banner text from the portal, including any reason and — for a deletion — the erasure date.
• •The failing log lines from one affected device: backupengine agent logs --tail 50.