There is one thing you can always count on RIM doing (or in this case not doing) during a crisis. Communicating and providing transparency for their users. RIM has a history of data outages over the years culminating with 2 outages in the past 7 days. They might have a reason for the outage and it may be that they were up all night fixing this current one but WHY CANT THEY TELL US WHATS HAPPENING!
During an outage BlackBerry users are left totally in the dark wondering what happened to their devices. Some users are smart enough to immediately check BerryReview or send in a tip asking if there is an outage but many users have no clue. RIM provides no public notice of the current status of their network and everybody is left scrambling trying to figure out what the issue is. While RIM may notify some of their big enterprise customers (and rarely the press) they have NEVER sent or posted any notification for users. They don’t even have the decency of releasing an apology.
A simple and timely Mea Culpa would at least show RIM that they care about the 50%+ of their consumer users. Instead we have to rely on websites like www.dataoutages.com to let us know when RIM notifies the customers they actually care about. Jared @PC World takes this one step further saying that RIM should compensate users
So RIM when will you realize that your main customer base is regular consumers? Users are getting tired of RIM providing no SLA or even an apology and explanation. Wouldn’t it be nice if RIM just came out and acknowledged issues? The fact that we still have massive points of failure for the BlackBerry infrastructure is really getting old but a status dashboard like Google has would only help alleviate the questions. They could even just post a notification on their Official BlackBerry Blog. Transparency and communication goes a long way…
What do you think?
andrewnyc ( View Profile) Newcomer - Posts: 63
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 11:42 AM EST from my BlackBerry 9700
Agree 100%. The lack of communication by RIM is unacceptable. How hard would it be to put up a status page? In addition, I think RIM needs a status indicator on their devices to indicate the network health; the way things are now, you have no idea that there is an outage until you realize you’ve gone hours without a new email.
David H Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 11:52 AM EST
Blackberry has a twitter and facebook account. They could have put something on there to help users that were in the dark about the outage!
beamolite ( View Profile) Enthusiast - Posts: 261
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 11:55 AM EST
They have our email addresses. How hard would it to be to email everyone about the outage and why?
yandar ( View Profile) Newcomer - Posts: 44
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 11:59 AM EST
? How would they email us when an outage generally means that BIS is tits up.
DK Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 12:10 PM EST
RIM and their closed network are in trouble as soon as somebody (read: Google?) figures out how to deliver even half the enterprise mobile end-to-end capabilities. Clock’s ticking.
Jon Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 12:11 PM EST
Easy, they charge for this service. Anybody who has a support contract gets regular e-mails about outages and advanced notice of scheduled outages. That’s what dataoutages reports. RIM just wants your money.
Anyway, enough’s enough. This plus memory leaks, plus crappy browser= I just got myself a iphone.
DK Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 12:17 PM EST
If only. I’ve had BES support contracts with RIM for years, have never received such notices. Would be a good plan, though.
DK Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 12:18 PM EST
Why does this software change a tongue icon to a smiley? Sigh.
geodorn Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 12:12 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9000
It would just take the RIM lawyers too much time to check every word of a possible apology or outage statement. Before they can finish such a check the outage is over
Jon Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 12:26 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9000
Its on their website. You used to need a higher T level. Note the footnote that says this info is _under NDA_.
“Notifications of planned or unplanned network-related events and access to a support tool that shows the status of the BlackBerry Infrastructure”
Matthew Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 1:51 PM EST from my BlackBerry 8320
Don’t really see what this would change. If there’s a data outage, you wouldn’t get any status updates on your BB anyway, and if I’ve got access to my computer, a site like BerryReview gives me the info (both official and unofficial) that I need. If there’s an outage, no amount of status updates will bring the data back. It’s back when it’s back, and if there are too many outages, then ditch the ‘Berry.
papped Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 8:38 PM EST
I think that is the bottom line…. People just want to “feel better” about the situation. Doesn’t matter if a “status” page would be redundant. As you said you are just as likely to find the info just as fast (or faster) on forums or blogs anyways. But people would feel some sort of comfort from a RIM authorized location, even though it’s almost guaranteed to be a slower form of notification than what you can already find…
DavidB ( View Profile) Guru - Posts: 1751
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 2:06 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9530
Your rant sounds almost exactly same as I commented here and over at BlackBerry Motion.
The total lack of a publicly accessible “system status” page is hurting RIM’s credibility with just the customer base they are so aggressively courting. Users hear how reliable BlackBerry service is a
DavidB ( View Profile) Guru - Posts: 1751
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 2:08 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9530
Your rant sounds almost exactly same as I commented here and over at BlackBerry Motion.
The total lack of a publicly accessible “system status” page is hurting RIM’s credibility with just the customer base they are so aggressively courting. Users hear how reliable BlackBerry service is and that is a key draw versus the competition yet those customers join BlackBerry nation only to see outages like these and the total lack of communication. Sad.
From my BlackBerry Storm…
Phoenix Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 2:54 PM EST
RIM could do a lot of things to communicate better (Like including change logs in OS updates instead of making the community figure it out on our own). I’d just read the article about the info BoxTone compiled about the outage, pretty impressive…
http://www.berryreview.com/2009/12/23/boxtone-gives-some-insight-into-rims-latest-outage/
Heatley Fan Not Registered
Posted: December 23, 2009 at 4:40 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9000
Well said. There was nothing more embarassing yesterday then having to use my best friend’s iphone (my first time using) to check my nhl scores. To make matter worst this is a friend with whom I’ve engaded in long endless debates on how superior and more reliabe Blackberries are. I was trying to stay positive thinking they were upgrading something.
Steve Not Registered
Posted: December 24, 2009 at 12:53 AM EST from my BlackBerry 8330
All I can say is in one more day all the years of RIM’s BS goes away for me. Going Droid.