Is Apple Facing a MobileMe PR Problem?

Apple’s support forums are hopping today with customers angry about continuing problems with the rollout of MobileMe web services. The MobileMe Mail category has over 13,000 messages that have been viewed more than 50,000 times, with many of the messages expressing anger and frustration over a mail server crash and unexpected fiber-optic line problems that have left some subscribers without email access for as many as five straight days, according to AppleInsider.

Apple’s system status message acknowledges the MobileMe Mail issue but claims only 1% of its subscribers are affected. If that’s the case, the problems would appear to have struck a particularly vocal 1%.

DON'T MISS
Scammers Take Another Stab At MobileMe Users

16 comments »

About the author

Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

Posted in Apple, Customer Services, Quickies, Rail |

Thomas
Pissed off customers tend to do a lot more shouting than happy customers.
Barry
If the email server I relied on was down I’d be pretty darn vocal myself.
Mobile Me looks interesting but I think I’ll wait a couple of weeks for them to sort things out before I try the demo.
Dave
Well, I don’t make it a point to go to the discussion boards and bitch when things are working, so it’s understandable that the people there are vocal–they’re the ones having trouble. My first few days after the transition weren’t without problems, but since then I’ve had no trouble.
Cris
Im on my 7th day without (web/desktop) mail.
Nice service Apple!!!
Cris
Pedro
I never have problems with .mac mail before.
I have had not been able to access email via Mail.app or me.com since Friday!
Not a sigle word from Apple.
It just works? lol
JP Thomas
They have updated, finally, after 5 days (!), their little notice. It now reads:
“1% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. We apologize for this service interruption and are working hard to resolve the problem.
Important: if you are affected by this email outage please click here for more information.”
We may be a tiny little 1%, but at least, we do exist for Apple!! They are actually working on the issue!
It took them five days to wake up! But, oh my…, just this little message and the page it directs to is so much more than strictly nothing, or just rumors from other users. I know, I know, I get all excited just because of this… Imagine how low a state of disarray we fell to! No email for 5 days and no info… for a paying service!
Okay, now, Apple, an estimate of the date when the service will be restored, maybe? in two weeks? IF we continue posting our complains on your forums, which your censors will be deleting as they have been for the past 5 days?
It’s going to take far more than that to make me forget this disaster!…
Rotten Apple
Please keep reporting on this issue and pressing for answers from Apple about their lack of honest communication. I am among those affected by this outage, and it is one of the most infuriating situations I’ve ever experienced. The extended duration of this problem is outrageous, and there’s no estimate provided for when “service” with resume.
Steve
The 5 day email outage in itself is bad enough but Apple’s failure to communicate with its customers is what is really turning this into a PR disaster. Loyal Apple fans are spitting with fury and swearing never to recommend Macs to their friends again.
What’s worse is that it mainly seems to have affected long-time .Mac customers – the kind of people who are likely to own several Macs – Apple’s core customer base.
No-doz
They have a bit more than a PR problem. To quote Scotty (among others): “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
I was patient but the thing still doesn’t work. Email – both web-based and through desktop – was out many times over the last 24 hours (besides problems in days previous – Apple’s line that 1% of subscribers were having problems was off by two zeros. In addition, the syncs have often gone awry (my personal email address was randomly added to numerous contacts in Address Book), preferences and settings such as Mail Rules have been corrupted, email aliases have been lost, etc etc etc.
I’m now spending up to an hour a day dealing with various MobileMe problems and I think it is now shame on me about 100 times.
http://homepage.mac.com/mjbritt MJ Britt
I guess I’m pretty fortunate! Everything has been working brilliantly for me.
E-mail, calendars, contacts, and even photos…
Matt
Camperton
I’ve been thinking about trying SyncTogether. 100 bucks a year is starting to seem pretty steep for just synching my contacts, calendars and bookmarks. I use idisk fron time to time, but it is too slow for most files and I could easily dump my email aliases and go gmail. Anybody have any experience with this program? Is it worth a try?
Camperton
Stonewalling customers during an outage like this is the worst possible approach. People tend to be pretty good about stuff if kept in the loop. On the other hand people will yell if they think they aren’t being listened to and shutting out paying customers leads to nothing but frustration, alienation and resentment.
Felipe Lopez
I think that the 1% is a little bit optimistic. Transferring from .mac to mobile.me was not so smooth as you would expect from apple. Moreover, until now the “new experience” is very disappointing. First off, I don’t know anybody who didn’t experience problems during this transition and, until now, mobile me is not in the clouds. It’s just syncing every 15 minutes so they are delivering the same service as RIM does. You can be a apple fanboy al that you want but i think that mobile me is just a different user interface, with the same .mac bullshit. I hope that apple get’s it right with the other product they are introducing because i get a little bit fed up with the Steve J: it’s amazing shit.
Adam Fulford
As one of the 1% who has had severe problems moving from an @mac.com address to MobileMe with an iPhone I’m stunned at how bad the support experience was and still is. I have looked to the forums for solace over the past few days and the reality is that although the most vocal customers with a negative experience raise their voices online once you get to 13,000 messages all saying the same thing the futility of entering into that debate becomes obvious.
What is even more frustrating is the lack of phone or email support from Apple in this. Apple care don’t know what is going on with MobileMe and I have sent a total of 6 emails to MM support with not one non-automated response.
At a point where I seem to have lost the e-mail address I was paying to keep as well as all the mails in all my mailboxes (yes I know I should have backed up), there seems less reason to keep paying for a system that clearly doesn’t work.
http://definiteimage.com Itsik
Im a long time PC user, and the funny thing is that since day one I am having problems related to MobileMe, pretty annoying also to know that the tech support is so poor compared to my experience with PC and XP related products. Honestly, Mac users are virgins in tech problems, it feels like its 95 again, I know they have been pretty much blessed with a spoon fed type of product on the Mac, but this is where PC users have advantage. We always going to find someone who can hack and see what is going on on the backend, Mac users are stuck, no one is there to help, and Apple got the headach to work things out. Im reading forum after forum trying to see some results, and nothing…everyone is saying: Me too, I have the problem too….etc….when you go on a PC forum, there is hardly any unresolved issues, you always find the answer….
Mac users…..welcome to a new begning, where things gets really touch….
Love my iPhone, hate the fact that I am having a problem, I am waiting a few more weeks to give them a try, if by then my situation is not solved by a real tech, im going to the media, got some great connections there, they would love to do a story about the new iPhone service
Meach
I’ll just put in a second to Matt: no syncing or email problems for me, either, and I’m another long-time .Mac customer who relies on syncing home and work Macs. The only problem was on the first day (7/11) when my contacts didn’t show up for a few hours, but that resolved itself.
With MobileMe I’ll be looking forward to getting to the web apps when I use a borrowed computer while traveling.