Should one really call it "their own fault" if the "advice to sit tight and wait" that they ignored was advice that, for whatever reason(s), never reached them?
There was certainly an implicit uptime guarantee that was violated for them to complain about -- several weeks before restoration of data, no?
Yup: MS, Danger, T-Mo -- those are the first to come to mind here :-) . Or are you trying to pass the blame onto the victims?
Cheers, -- tlvp