And the MobileMe Complaint Train Rolls On

Over at Scobleizer, complaints abound about how Apple’s MobileMe completely deleted Robert’s calendar. And while I don’t use Calendar all that much–I’m kind of a Post-It sort of gal–I can imagine how a loss like that would cause panic, anger, and the desire to throw MobileMe out the window, whether such a thing were possible.

My experience with MobileMe has been far from perfect. In fact, I talked about just two weeks ago. But there’s a difference amoung next and now. soon after, MobileMe was ironing out launch kinks, which can be expected. Now, it’s exhibiting serious character flaws. 

“Apple’s secrecy keeps them from properly checking out their apps with tons of users, the way other companies do who aren’t so worried about secrecy,” says Robert Scoble. And while that may very well be true, I can’t help but think the problem is even deeper than that. Apple lover that I am, I think they’re in by their heads that moment. 

I haven’t had any calendar troubles. Everything syncs just fine now. But when I tried to add a domain name to my “Personal Domains,” MobileMe said it was invalid. Now, I did some digging and it seems even though MobileMe is supposed to recognize sites with hyphens in them, it’s not. I plus found

out that Apple Support can help fix that for you. And that would be all fine and well whether Apple Support, you know, worked.

When you go on the MobileMe Support site, you’re prompted to browse through articles they have on various problems. whether the articles don’t help, you can choose the topic that fits the closest and next fill out an mail anatomy. However, that e-mail structure is nowhere in sight. And the live chat is “unavailable.” But these issues are only on the U.S. version of the Apple site. Go in the U.K. site and the newsletter style is as plain as day. However, online reports seem to indicate that folks are just getting a standardized e mail precisely 48 hours after their inquiry.

So what’s the deal here? Is Apple turning its back on its customers? Is it merely overwhelmed with inquiries? Are they doing their best to fix the problems right now? 

I don’t know the answers to these questions, and while I doubt they’re ignoring their customers, it would be the courteous thing to do to at least indicate they’re working it. Including urls to help chats and indicating there’s an e mail support scheme when there isn’t one, is just plain misleading.

[Source] Brenda Stokes