iPhone randomly deleted all of my contacts stored on my iphone, zero helpful support from Apple.

My phone deleted every contact stored "on my iPhone" without me touching the contacts or any settings in icloud or anything. I was in the middle of a text conversation when I noticed it deleted my girlfriends contact. After looking for technical support on Apples website, I tried everything to no avail.

I restored from an icloud backup which found the contacts again after 3 hours of support with apple on the phone with their "geniuses" Senior Support reps. After loading an icloud backup, they showed up again, then - surprise - they randomly deleted again by the next day. I have a feeling something in the new ios 16.1/16.2 is making this happen. I didn't have an opportunity to restore to another backup until later, but when I did that icloud backup which had my contacts was gone, and none of the contacts were on my more recent backups. Support told me that there is no way to retrieve this data.

How does this even happen? Doesn't make any sense. For one of the biggest companies in the world, this is mind-boggling to me. This honestly makes me want to never use apple products again. I have never had a device randomly delete my data or contacts and have zero solutions for retrieving that data again.

None of the 10 senior support reps knew anything, and they were all basically blaming me when I hadn't touched anything, it was the device that randomly purged all of my work and personal contacts from the last 8 years. Looking at other options for phones now. Do better, Apple.