RIM Offers Users Free Apps to Compensate for Outage
Is this enough to make you 'appy?
Last week, Research in Motion suffered what's being called the worst service outage in company history. Affecting users around the world, the service interruption lasted three days. Not long after normal service resumed, unhappy customers started demanding compensation. Today, RIM announced that it will be compensating users. However, the company is not doling out cash refunds to the affected. Instead, users who experienced problems last week will be getting free apps.
The company announced today that a selection of premium apps worth a total value of more than US $100 will be offered to subscribers as an expression of appreciation for their patience during the service outages. The apps will be made available to customers over the coming weeks on BlackBerry App World and will continue to be available until December 31, 2011.
Aside from the special package of apps, enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free technical support and current customers will be offered a complimentary one month extension of their existing technical support. If you don't have a tech support contract already, RIM is giving you a one month trial of RIM’s BlackBerry Technical Support Services - Enhanced Support, free of charge.
"We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers," said said RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. "We've worked hard to earn their trust over the past 12 years, and we're committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect, today and in the future."
"We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience," he added. "We have apologized to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence. We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again."
For additional details about the free tech support program and information about how to register will be available at www.blackberry.com/enterpriseoffer.
The apps included in the special compensation package are:
• SIMS 3 - Electronic Arts
• Bejeweled - Electronic Arts
• N.O.V.A. - Gameloft
• Texas Hold’em Poker 2 - Gameloft
• Bubble Bash 2 - Gameloft
• Photo Editor Ultimate - Ice Cold Apps
• DriveSafe.ly Pro - iSpeech.org
• iSpeech Translator Pro - iSpeech.org
• Drive Safe.ly Enterprise - iSpeech.org
• Nobex Radio™ Premium - Nobex
• Shazam Encore - Shazam
• Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant - Vlingo
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This is great! Now I will have something to do on my Blackberry while I wait for my new Android phone that my company is replacing it with!
Outside of the tech realm many people don't understand what a BlackBerry service outage actually means. I live in Boston and was without email, BBM and internet for 12 hours. I could still do voice calls and SMS. Verizon is giving me a credit for 1 day and I get some free apps I'm happy. The last service outage was in 2009. People in the UK and such who were out for 3 days I do think have a legit gripe, 12 hours? not so much. In my own case...2 years of up time with 12 hours of downtime....not exactly that bad.
This is great! Now I will have something to do on my Blackberry while I wait for my new Android phone that my company is replacing it with!
I feel bad for your company if they are going with Android..lol My company won't allow any Android or i-anything to connect to it's servers. They came close to approving Android based devices until all the malware crap starting happening with the app store. Nothing made by Apple is a allowed to connect to the network.
I somewhat agree with you, however timing is everything when it comes to making decisions about where you will place your trust in technology. There's a plethora of choices available to consumers and businesses alike right now. Perhaps for one who has been mulling around the options, doing comparisons, and weighing the pros & cons of switching - the timing of this outage was all they needed to push them towards making that decision. That's exactly what happened with my company. While they aren't immediately switching out all Blackberry devices, they are switching employees out to Android & iOS devices (phones & tablets) once they are eligible for an equipment upgrade - or when their current Blackberry phone needs to be replaced.
Currently, they are supporting all 3 formats. They are beginning to phase out the Blackberry's though, as I stated above. Their way of working around the malware issue is by creating their own "App Market," through which all of the company-supported software can be downloaded. The only way around it would be to root your phone, and I believe that would probably lead to people getting fired.
The damage is done.
Where did it go wrong for Blackberry? It seems like just a few years ago I was still hearing about people tied to their Blackberries. Then Android hit and suddenly I don't seem to hear anything about Blackberry. My guess is that they simply couldn't keep up all of the innovation that was happening at Google and Apple and they fell by the wasteside. That or they became more like IBM and started focusing even more on their corporate sector. But this outage will be disastorous for Blackberry. The U.S. government heavily uses Blackberries so this outage could make them rethink their mobile options. It doesn't help that at the same time Blackberry is trying to focus on business oriented customers that they bomb one of the most important things to a business: reliablility.
i don't see how businesses can get away from blackberry. there encryption is the best in the market. android is still too new and i doubt the e-mail service for the iphone could even beat RIM's
I don't like how they are offering free apps to make up for it but really what can they do? at least they are offering free tech support too
Too little - too late.
Connection down for a week and I get a set of game downloads?
Too little - too late. Connection down for a week and I get a set of game downloads?
On earth a week is 7 days, not 3.
It's funny to see folks react. All of this technology has issues from time to time. Being down a day or 3 isn't that huge of deal in the whole realm of things. I could still communicate and if I needed to check my email, I logged into my computer the old fashion way. Lol You will see flaws in the Android and iPhone you chose. It happens. People get on the kick of what is new and that somehow makes it better. When I needed my email 7 years ago, there was a great solution, Blackberry. Blackberry makes a sound product and their email delivery and encryption is still second to none. I will continue to support Blackberry. Hopefully there are others like myself that are loyal and continue to do the same.
What i do not understand, people forget Technology is technology, it is bound to go down sometime, and even when it went down, it didnt stop me from sending SMS's. Now people are saying that RIM is now the new BribeBerry. Come on people, technology goes down, and they were unlucky to have both servers go down at the same time. It is one of those things that happen in life. Im quite happy to stay with BB. I feel that RIM is doing everyone a favour with giving out free apps, needless to say i wont download them as i believe i should get charged for them. Why must they make a loss on what Technology can do. Deal with it.
On earth a week is 7 days, not 3.
Earth? who lives there anymore!
just trying to avoid a massive lawsuit by offering presents to users.
Still, the best thing to do...
Where do they come off saying th eissue is reolved. We have numerous company phones that have still not been restored.
Did anybody get notified yet? Thought I would have by now. Saw the registration form for the one month free tech support, but don't need that....just want the free apps, gulldurnit.!!!