There are multiple WTF in this one line.

Chris, T-mobile customer services is is the best I have experienced SO FAR - not only from a telecoms company (I have had my share of experience with Verizon), but ANY company I have ever dealt with. And what you experienced is NORMAL customer service when it come to t-mobile.

Just because they are not AT&T does not mean they suck. Just because they are not beloved Apple does not mean they suck.

In fact, your argument should have been the other way round given how many stories I have heard from Apple bullshitting when it comes to customer service - MobileMess notwithstanding!

This is consumerist, not Gizmodo (your sister site). Have some sense, please. Or Gawker has a blanket notice to all the sites they operate to keep on feeding Apple/AT&T lies?

I use windows every day at work and it just sucks. My computer takes about 4-5 minutes after logging in to be able to use anything. When explorer crashes or IE explodes it ruins my whole windows session and it's just way to messy. It's not neat. I use outlook (exchange) for my mail and calendars, and it's just not as easy, or intuitive, or "fun" as Mail and iCal. It's just not. In this day and age using a computer shouldn't be that painful. I should be able to expect things not to crash or be so hard to figure out (like trying to get my outlook messages to be marked as read after 1 second of viewing instead of when i click off of it to another message). It's the little things (and MANY big things) that just make OS X a much more fun and personable OS to use.

ha ha ha Ha Ha HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!! You can NOT.

And you're going to build it out of what, Legos? Tinker toys? Lincoln Logs?

Let me guess, you're going to put Vista or Linux on it? Yeah. That will be JUST LIKE a Mac.

Whenever www.sketchymacequivalentpcs.com goes live, please let me know, so I can buy your $400 Macbook equivalent.

Man. Thanks for the best laugh I've had all week.

@shorty63136: Such a typical Kool Aid drinker answer. That's been my perpetual issue with Macs and their fanboys is that they pretty much refuse to acknowledge any gaffe's or failures. But then again, when you are a consumer focused company you can afford these kind of screwups b/c individuals while aggregated can be a significant number but they lack the ability to make judgments or decisions that say a corporate customer who bought 10,000 units of something can. If Apple loses 1 customer no big deal, unless that customer bought 10,000 Macs and will not again in the future. When Apple gets serious about serving corporate customers then this is a newsworthy article until then, this is just 1 more example of how NOT ready Apple is the major leagues.

I have had t-Mobile for two years now, and even though there are the occasional bad apple CSR's, their support has been great. They've knocked down bills when it's been completely my fault, shipped me new phones outside the repair/replace period and much more. I recommend it to everyone (and I HATE ATT mobile service...which is why there is no iphone in my future).

Hello -- I am one of those unfortunate users whose mobileme mail has been down since Friday at 1:15 p.m. EST. As I'm sure you know, this has been a complete nightmare. I work for a software company so I understand and know first hand how things like this can happen. I want to be clear -- I'm not nearly so angry or frustrated about the outage itself -- I am THOROUGHLY infuriated at how poorly it's been handled.

The system status on the mobileme support page hasn't changed since Friday. 1% of users currently cannot access mail and everything else is hunky dory. Ummm hellloooooo?? This is helpful to us? First, I don't believe it's only 1% of users, and further that system status is not particularly enlightening or informative. How about the truth and some additional information. Things happen, we understand that, it frustrates us -- but to insult us with a system message? How about a splash across the screen: "In the system conversion to MobileMe, we have had some major server outages. Clearly this is not the level of service we want to provide, and we apologize for this and are working round the clock to fix it. If you would like to know if you are impacted by this outage (versus another issue) please email us at XXXX and we commit to responding to all inquiries within 24 hours." THAT would have been honest, forthright, and helpful! Even better set up a crisis hotline dedicated solely to MobileMe mail outage so we can call and find out "Yup, you're affected" and provide you an alternate email address where you can keep us posted on status updates. Or even via text message! My company has a software product that allows for instant text message and phone messaging that could be very useful in situations like this.

Instead I have had to sit off and on all weekend waiting for someone to chat with. I missed them twice (after waiting for more than 5 hours both times) and then all day yesterday chat wasn't even available and your message was "Due to overwhelming interest in mobile me" -- OVERWHELMING INTEREST?!?! What a crock! It's due to your server outage -- don't lie to us. We're not dumb.

It wasn't until just a little while ago that I was able to get through (it took me about 45 minutes this time I believe). Only then was I able to find out (from Aaron, bless his heart, he's getting beaten up by MANAGEMENT'S lack of proactivity on this) that indeed I am in the "1%" affected, and he explained to me in more detail the serve outage problem. If I had known that all along, I wouldn't have wasted so much time and I wouldn't be nearly so angry.

In addition, I am currently under an AppleCare support plan. So I tried calling someone. I talked to two different people who were very nice, but of absolutely no help, because you haven't empowered them to know anything about what's going on. CMON!!!! Really??? Left hand, meet your right hand.

It's all well and good to say "we don't offer telephone support for mobileme" (which is ridiculous in my opinion, especially since it's a service I am paying for and it's new -- you should have staffed up appropriately for this roll out) but we, your customers, are going to call your reps anyway when left no other recourse. Wouldn't you? Give those support reps appropriate and informative updates. Send out a mass communication saying "here's the current status you can tell people." Help your people out, for goodness sake, instead of leaving them to fend for themselves and just say "sorry, I wish I knew."

And although there seems to be a mysterious email address where I could have emailed someone, I'll be damned if I can find it on your mobileme support page.
Cleverly hidden I see.

Your lack of responsiveness to this crisis has cost me I don't know how many hours of time and frustration, not to mention your entire support organization countless hours of the same -- all because you didn't address this in any sort of reasonable way.

I love my Apple products for the most part. I'm all about my iphone, my iMac, my iPod, my shuffle, etc. But this has me seriously considering changing my email and not renewing my subscription -- which is to happen in a matter of a few days.

Not good. Convince me I've been heard and that you care. If you'd just done a couple of really simple things, you could have averted a whole host of bad feelings and frustrations on the part of your employees and customers. Cmon, Apple, you can do better.

I can be reached at xxxxxxx@aol.com (until you get me back up and running) or at XXX.XXX.XXXX.

Thanks!

Colin

Current Mood: annoyed

July 21st, 2008
04:15 pm: ARRRGHHHH MOBILE ME MY HINEY!
Ok, so yeah I'm an apple lover. I heart my imac, my iphone, my ipod. I'm all about the iLife, I suppose.

But boy have they FKED IT UP ROYALLY. With the switchover to this mobileme crap, I have not been able to access email since Friday at 1:18 p.m. Can't get to the support chat for Mobile Me as it's unavailable due to "overwhelming interest in mobileme." (Overwhelming interest my patootie. It's an overwhelming fk up of major proportions.) The website says 1% of users can't access email. HA!!! Their call center is overwhelmed with calls. And these calls to actual apple support are variations on a theme:

You can email them?
We know as much as you do.
I suspect they won't answer your email.
The chat functionality gets you to people who actually know mobileme, as we don't support it and don't have access to support it.

Apple, you have fked up bigtime!!

All this for 99 bucks a year. Woo hoo...

WHEN WILL I GET MY EMAIL?!?!?! I may have won the Netherlands national lottery and am missing my window of opportunity to give them all my private information to prove I am who I am and that I will be set for life.

Trying to find the humor...

Also, to scroll, enable two finger scrolling (Macbook/Macbook Pro/Macbook Air), use the scroll ball (mighty mouse), or a scroll wheel (any usb mouse).

It's really not that difficult.

-------------

My mobile me went down for about two days (thursday/friday, same time my iPhone went down due to the activation servers). Since it's been back up, it's worked flawlessly; but I hadn't realized how much I depend on the idisk until then (I barely even use the documents folder except for large AV projects, and even then, they are usually on an external HD).

I did not, however, recieve a free month of .me service. That was annoying. Just got charged yesterday for my annual renewal, the date did not budge a day since I signed up last summer.

@sketchy: You...are...A GOD!!! You took every thought I had and put it to screen. Thank you.

I also don't get why OP had a problem comparing Apple to Tmobile. Tmobile has always had great customer service. It actually made me sad when I left them for AT&T/iPhone. Maybe when I upgrade, i'll jailbreak my old one and go back to T-mobile.

@pianos101: you sound like someone who once opened a "nekkid pics" attachment from some email, only to find out that it contained a virus. or someone who installzed bonzai buddy because they thought it was cute. well, i guess os x would protect you from that sort of stupidity.

Thus this is how Apple deals with serious errors.

They don't.

who's the marketing "genius" who came up with such a corny name for what's supposed to be an identifier with the coolest computer company?

Sarah: Hello Gail, how are you this afternoon?

gail: Sarah, i have not received .mac or mobile me mail

gail: since last Friday morning. this is causing SEVERE HARDSHIP on
my business and income. I am a sole proprietor and now i am
hemorraging money.

Sarah: i understand that your business is taking losses because of
this mail outage. Please believe me when I say that our engineers are
working hard to re-establish access for your mail services

gail : What about the financial damages caused to me by apple?

gail : How will Apple compensate me?

Sarah: I'll be right with you.

Sarah: what every agent will tell you is that compensation for this
mail outage has not been announced, and neither has an ETA on a
resolution.

gail : You should know that I am going to copy this chat and paste it
on the internet for all to see. I need my mail service restored.

gail: what is happening to my un-received messages?

Sarah: please understand that because I am not on the engineering
side and do not know what the specific server issue is or what their
'to-do' list entails I am unable to provide you with a reliable ETA
on when your mail services will be back online. I wouldn't want to
speculate and be wrong. It's not like I can flip a switch and have
access restored

Sarah: after four days of being undelivered on the server the sender
will receive a bounced message pertaining to that email

gail : Is your server storing my messages for me to receive when the
problem is eventually resolved?

Sarah: when services are restored any messages that have been on the
server for less than the four-day period will be received by your
account

gail: Is it possible to forward the presently un-deliverable messages
to an alternate account so I don't continue to lose money? I need to
buy food.

gail: And so the older messages are lost to me forever unless the
person re-sends them?

Sarah: because any messages that your account would receive have to
go though the server in order to be delivered and then forwarded to
another account this is not possible

Sarah: the sender of the emails will at least be notified with the
bounced message that you did not receive the email to begin with, so
I would hope that they would at least contact you or attempt to
resend it

gail : So what the hell am I supposed to do? It's not like I can flip
a switch and get my business mail back.

Sarah: I would love nothing better than to have these mail services
restored. 1% of 1 million customers is 10,000 people who are unable
to access their mail.

gail: that is 1% too many

gail: Is it possible for Apple to notify people who are sending email
to .mac or .me accounts that Apple's servers have melted down and
that they can try an alternate mail for the intended recipient?

gail: 10,000 = 1,000,000 annual dollars in charges for this service.

Sarah: to my knowledge this is not something that Apple is
considering. It would technically mean sending an email to ANY
potential sender of email, which would be every email address
possible, not just mobileme accounts

gail: If in fact is really is only 1%. previous reports said it was 4%.

gail: Is it possible that this is messed up beyond repair? six days
is a long time to repair a server and get 10,000 accounts back online.

gail: Here's a suggestion: Have apple publish something on the
internet notifying the general public of this so people attempting to
contact their loved ones and business associates know they are not
being ignored.

Sarah: please understand ma'am that we are doing everything in our
power in order to resolve this issue as quickly as possible, for
everyone's sake. However, the only course of action that i see to be
available is to either wait it out until we can get this server up
and running, cancel the account so it wouldn't matter, or send an
email to those on your contact list from another email address
informing them of this outage and where to contact you

gail: The fact that i am talking to you right now means that IT DOES
matter.

gail: And I have waited too long, which is why i am communicating
with you in the first place.

Sarah: i wish I had more information for you, believe me i do, it
would make things a lot easier for a lot of people, but I've told you
exactly the same information that I've told to customers that I
chatted with earlier, which is all the information that is currently
available regarding this mail outage.

gail: That's not enough.

gail: Something needs to be done differently

Sarah: I know that, but I have nothing else to offer except my
sincerest apologies for this

gail: I have offered suggestions myself but they are falling on deaf
ears.

gail: Apologies are appreciated but they do not fix the problem.

Sarah: no they do not

Sarah: i wish they did though

gail : OK, so please tell me what exactly is being done to restore
the service to me an 9,999 others.

Sarah: as i am not privvied to the engineering department's 'to-do'
list and as i do not know the precise cause of the outage with the
server I am unable to provide you with an answer to that question

gail : Is it possible that this is a permanent problem?

Sarah: in my experience mail outages have not been permanent

gail: This has not been at all helpful.

Sarah: people who are paid much more and who are much higher up on
the totem pole are the folks who are responsible for those decisions,
I'm just asked to know the product, it's features, how to
troubleshoot its issues, and support its customers

gail: How can I be in contact with people higher up on the totem pole
and who are paid more than you?

Sarah: i have a link to the feedback page with a webform that you can
submit comments, concerns and suggestions directly to the MobileMe
development team

gail : That site has been taken down.

Sarah: it loads ok for me

Sarah: http://www.apple.com/feedback/mac/tm.html

Sarah: try this link

gail: Can I have the email address for the Chief of Engineering?

gail : Or is he one of the 10,000?

Sarah: regrettably i do not have access to that information

Sarah: i know I'm not being very helpful but my hands are tied in
this respect

gail: So in sum, no more news. There is a problem and Apple doesn't
know when it will be fixed. Right?

Sarah: pretty much

gail: That is not acceptable.

Sarah: i could always lie to you and say that it will be up shortly,
just wait till this afternoon or some jargon along those lines, but I
will not lie to my customers, I let them know exactly what's going on
as far as our department knows

gail: What makes you think I would want you to lie to me?

Sarah: the information that I'm providing I do not believe you are
accepting

Sarah: but it is the truth of the matter

Sarah: and I won't tell anyone something that's not true just to make
them happy

gail: I am saying that the situation and apple's response is
unacceptable to me. And probably to the 9,999 others. And I have been
honest and forthright with you too, and am not patting myself on the
back for "not lying"

Sarah: if this is unacceptable there's not much as a customer suppor
t agent that I can do about it as the situation is beyond my control

gail: Certainly telling someone something that's not true will not
make them happy. So you are correct about that.

Sarah: Is there any other information that i can look up for you this
afternoon ma'am?

gail: I would like an apology for your implication that if I was lied
to I would be happy.

gail: Because it is a juvenile and purile statement.

Sarah: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.

gail : Sure

Sarah: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.

Sarah: i certainly will apologize if my statements were construed as
such, it was absolutely not my intention to offend you in any manner.
I was just trying to find a 'silver lining'. In that I recognize the
situation is less than ideal (serious understatement) and my
intention was to point out that despite this scenario the information
I am able to provide you with is all I that I can do for you at this
time.

Sarah: and at least you can depend on what information I am able to
tell you

gail: The silver lining is that I have no service and i am not being
lied to, correct?

Sarah: the silver lining is that we admit there is a problem, we are
working to resolve this problem, and we will provide you with any and
all information that we have regarding this problem

gail: Thanks, SArah!

See, us "apple fanboys" don't never ever have to deal with the crap that is windows. Yes, sometimes i have issues with OS X, but there is a very helpful support base out there (macrumors.com for one) where people are very helpful at pinpointing problems without even getting AppleCare involved. But i'm more than willing to take these few problems over the CRAP that is windows. No bloatware, no spyware, no bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, I have been an Apple user since 1981 and love the
product, but methinks Steve's "Reality Distortion Field" strikes again.

Also, to scroll on a mac, you put one finger on the touchpad and slide the other down the touchpad, moving you down the page.

Wow, Apple must have really screwed the pooch to get Fanboy #1 Pogue Boy all riled up!

Poor baby...

But I'm still waiting for him to reply to my comment that I can't care how beautifully designed the new Mac OS may be -- the sucker doesn't have a scroll bar or scroll wheel!

I ask my Mac friends, "How do you scroll with this thing?" And when they point me to the scroll bar on the far right of the screen -- necessitating repositioning the cursor EVERY time you scroll, wasting an amazing aggregate amount of time during the course of a day online or writing documents -- I can only quote Scotty, "How quaint."

"This is out of the norm for them seeing as how when Apple releases a product, it just works."

Broken products ARE the Apple norm. You may just may not have been an Apple user for long enough.

I still remember the OSX launch. I have never seen so many kernel panics, the mac blue screen of death, on a unix based system. They managed to break several key features such as PRINTING! Oh and I was charged around $120 every 12-18 months for an update. This update was required for me to keep using my devices while obliterating compatibility with others.

I hear OSX is quite wonderful now.
Apple hardware is horrid and has been since Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

In contrast I purchased windows xp once. Most of my old win 95 devices worked just fine. I have never had to pay MS to fix a bug or broken feature in windows. It is stable and works for all my tasks and needs infrequent attention.

From a 'it just works standpoint' I've seen MS do a far better job. From a marketing standpoint Apple is king.

Instead, along comes MobileMe to replace it. And somehow I doubt they built and entirely new software+hardware infrastructure to do it.

absolutely agreed admiral.

this is like the security holes. Microsoft gets ripped on because they are big. But they got big for a reason. Apple products are overpriced IMHO and they aren't what they say they are.

@AuntNi: Why, you aren't going to lose the songs...

It may take awhile to sync that many songs but if you do it while you're at work or sleeping it shouldn't really matter.

Reinstall and restore are your best options. Its obviously not just a software issue as I've had no problems with 7.7 and haven't heard much in the way of web chatter about it.

I'm an Apple fan, but I'm not here to defend Apple. I'm really pissed that iTunes 7.7 won't let us sync our iPods with iTunes. We've spent two weeks looking at the spinning beach ball every time we plug the iPods in. Apple's response was telling us to reinstall iTunes and restore our iPods. With over 18,000 songs - no thanks! I'm waiting impatiently for them to fix this bug, but it sounds like they've really got their hands full. Very disappointing.

The thing is, Apple does make some truly great products. But when they do things that any other company would get crucified for (this MobileMe fiasco, charging for ipod software updates, the ridiculous NDA program for the iphone SDK, etc), they somehow get defended. Like I said, I love the Apple products I have, but I don't get the blind loyalty thing.

@sketchy: Amen. Keywords from your comments..."bleeding" and "overpriced".

I can't agree with the non-factual comment that everytime Apple releases a product that "...it just works. Period." I still recall Mac OS 8 and the nightmare that was to support.

Also, please stop with the Microsoft bashing. I loathe them as much as the next person, but, they really don't have a comparable offering. The closest things they do offer (e.g. Windows Live Small Business) are still only mildly comparable, and, haven't suffered the type of catastrophic explosion on the launchpad that MobileMe has.

If MobileMe were a free service I would personally cut Apple a bit more slack. As they charge a handsome sum for it...well, that's just plain sad.

I agree with Franklin. Apple gets away with far too much because of their fanboys.

What can they do? Make it clear that they are aware of the situation and are working towards fixing them. Ask people what exactly is wrong. Update their customers with status updates.

If this was Microsoft or Sony or whoever, this would be completely unacceptible... but because it's Apple it's okay? Seriously?

"What would you want them to do"...

Um... How about not rolling out a half-baked service? Of course, Apple can get away with this because they have legions of fan-boys willing to bend over and take it.

FWIW, I am on my second ipod and have loved them both, but Apple gets away with FAR too much from their leigons of sycophants.

stick with Gmail and fetch.

It's not like Microsoft who churns out a product infested with bugs and takes their sweet time fixing your anus while they still have their hands on your shoulders.

I know four people who've had their situations with MobileMe rectified during this mess (and yes, it is a mess) but only after being patient - and 5 more who were given free (albeit non-working) MM accounts because it took 3+ hours to get their iPhones activated.

I haven't had any problems with ActiveSync...of course that is a well documented, tried and true, mature product.