It's also poor backup. They thought the backup was being done by their hosting company while in reality it was failing silently.

A good backup is one that can be restored.

A poor backup becomes a poor restore, while a good backup isn't necessarily a good restore. It's like quibbling over whether I said, "his car was completely totaled in the race" rather than, "he didn't win the race." No one thinks that not crashing your car implies that you've won a race, but you can't win a race with a crashed car.