RIM's apology includes $100 in free apps

Published on 10-17-2011 07:12 PM

Research In Motion is turning to its BlackBerry App World to try to make things right with customers who were affected by last week's BlackBerry service outage.

According to the company, BlackBerry owners will soon be able to download over $100 in free "premium" applications, which will be available through the end of the year. The applications include Sims 3, iSpeech Translator Pro, and Shazam Encore, among others. Enterprise users will also be given one month of free technical support from RIM.

In a statement, RIM said that the free apps are a token of its appreciation for customer patience.
"We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience," RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in a statement today. "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."

RIM's troubles started last week when the company's services, including e-mail and BlackBerry messaging, went down across the world. After a few days, the company was finally able to get its services back online. But by then, the damage was done, and many users around the globe started complaining.
To help quell the unrest, Lazaridis posted a video on RIM's site apologizing for the outage, saying that the company failed its customers.

"Since launching BlackBerry in 1999, it's been my goal to provide reliable real-time communications around the world," Lazaridis said in the video. "We did not deliver on that goal this week--not even close. I apologize for the service outages this week. We've let many of you down."

But whether or not free applications will be able to make up for the outage remains to be seen. Millions of people around the globe rely upon RIM's BlackBerry services, and for some folks, those services were out for more than a day. Whether or not customers will be willing to stick with RIM's devices after this incident is very much up in the air.

RIM's free apps will start being rolled out on Wednesday. The company says that it will be offering the "premium" apps over a period of four weeks.

Categories:
Software,
Hardware

5 Comments

mjmacky - 10-17-2011, 07:41 PM
- Reply
Yeah, that's what you do when upset your customers, especially since it includes a population of the big important types.

IdolEyes787 - 10-17-2011, 08:48 PM
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If you bought the phone how are the apps free?

Oh maybe it's like where I bought my 70 inch LED TV on the promise that I would save $2000 dollars.
Talk about false advertising, the TV didn't save me anything ,on the contrary it actually cost me four thousand bucks.

I'm thinking of suing.

megabyteme - 10-17-2011, 10:41 PM
- Reply
Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

I bought my 70 inch LED TV [snip] it actually cost me four thousand bucks.

70"?!!! Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just buy prescription glasses?

Have fallen out of the television market. I seem to remember one company producing a mega-bucks 100"-er some time back, but did not know 70" was even an available size.

IdolEyes787 - 10-18-2011, 12:15 AM
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http://www.leons.ca/televisions/shar...0/1519871.aspx

Only problem is with a screen that big I have to sit outside my house to be at the correct viewing distance.

megabyteme - 10-18-2011, 08:04 AM
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Looks like a VERY nice TV, Idol! I've got a 12+ year old Sharp LCD projector that I've been quite happy with. I would gladly purchase another Sharp when I upgrade to HD, but I know I won't have the money to do so this time around. Luckily, some of the less expensive brands offer some pretty good bang-for-the-buck. Sharp certainly knows their way around the technology. I do believe that you will be happy with your purchase for several years.