BlackBerry Users File Suit Against Research in Motion
$100 in Apps Not Enough
BlackBerry users are out for blood this week less than a month after a massive, worldwide network outage left them without fully functional service for a few days. According to new reports, BlackBerry users in both the United States and Canada have filed class action lawsuits against the device's maker, Research in Motion (RIM).
Reports of the massive outage first hit the web about two weeks ago. At first, it appeared the problem only affected BlackBerry users in South America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. However, North American users soon discovered they were also having trouble sending calls and text messages. For many "CrackBerry" users, the outage was a very big deal.
In an attempt to woo angry customers back, BlackBerry-maker RIM offered both an explanation and a little compensation. First, it blamed the problem on a "core switch" failure at one of its European facilities. Unfortunately for RIM, the explanation failed to have the desired effect (and let's face it, for most angry BlackBerry users, even reports of alien attack would have failed to arouse sympathy).
"We restored full services as quickly as we could," explained RIM co-CEO, Mike Laziridis. "Now we're working on root cause analysis and we're focused on making this right for BlackBerry users around the world."
Beyond that, RIM also offered customers $100 in free games and downloads.
But that too failed to make people happy. One court filing in Quebec, Canada suggests customers believe they should have their entire monthly charge waived as compensation for the service outage.
"The petitioner expected to be compensated for the loss of services to which he was paying a monthly fee for," one filing said. "Instead, he was disappointed to learn that RIM was only offering some free App downloads that he does not want or need."
Subsequent research revealed that the customer's total financial loss was only about $1.25. Of course, that doesn't account for all the frustration and dropped calls to business associates and/or pizza restaurants.
South of the 49th parallel, a suit filed in a Southern California U.S. federal court accused RIM of being negligent and for breaching its contracts with customers.
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