Why are all my stats/awards/unlocks gone in Battlefield Bad Company?

When I signed in to Xbox live and started playing bfbc all of my weapons were gone. I proceeded to check all my awards and stats and they appear to have been erased as well. I was wondering if this is just some kind of connection failure and if i'll ever get all my "hard-earned" stuff back. I read something that mentioned that this has happened before to other people. Does it happen routinely? What is being done to stop this madness?