All google contacts deleted after HTC Desire OS Upgrade

[Dimebag]

Ever since I started up a google account, all my contacts were being added as "Google contacts", which I seemed to have utterly no control over.
I didn't want this "feature", because all it ever did for me was go wrong not showing contacts up at all in the list with all the rest of the normal contacts, stored on the phone.
I regularly sync the contacts and had to fiddle with the "people | view" settings to make them show up at all.

I upgraded to a new OS version on the phone today and it's deleted every single google contact I had, even under the "view" section after syncing, it shows up (0), zero.
I've logged in online and had a look at my contacts section, blank, empty.

Can I just ask what the point is of insisting that all new contacts are google contacts, not stored on the phone, not synced and the f**king wiped during a system upgrade.
Yes as you might be able to tell I'm more than slightly mad at being pushed to use something I didn't want in the first place, then it systematically failing me in the worst way possible.

This is very nearly the single most horrendous failure of functional use that I have ever experienced on a mobile phone, falling slightly short of a windows phone wiping every single contact on it by syncing outlook and it "replacing" all the contacts with a blank list. To say I'm mildly annoyed is beyond a joke, I've just lost about 30 random contacts from my list, all with phone numbers and linked facebook accounts. I'm getting texts from random numbers and I'm having to ask every single person who they are.

Why, WHY did the phone not sync these "google" contacts to the web and how for the love of God do I get my contacts back?
If possible I want to prevent the device from insisting every single contact is a "Google" contact. Nothing but trouble with this bastard handset ever since I got it.