RIM weighing up customer compensation for BlackBerry outage

RIM looking at customer compensation for BlackBerry outage
Will RIM cough up for BlackBerry downtime?

RIM's co-CEO's Mike Lazaridis and Jim Ballsillie have confirmed that all BlackBerry services are now fully operational, and that the company is looking into customer compensation.

Speaking at a hastily convened press conference to deal with the fallout from the recent BlackBerry outage, Lazaridis apologised again for the problems and said the failure was caused by a protection switch in the servers failed, which created a mail backlog that toppled the service.

RIM also pointed out that the service has been operational for 99.7% of the time over the last 18 months, although how much that will appease the millions of angry BlackBerry customers is hard to tell.

We want our money back

When probed about compensation for the consumers that paid for an unobtainable service, Ballsillie said the issue was "something we plan to come back to these customers on very, very soon."

The issue of deciding how much compensation, and how to offer it, is a tricky one, given there's no easy way of evaluating how much disruption each user was caused.

Oh, and one final piece of advice from the @UK_BlackBerry Twitter feed: "If you are still experiencing any delays with messaging or browsing, please try rebooting your phone by the battery removing then reinserting."

We wonder if anyone tried the same thing with the servers...

Via Mashable

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grew with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.

Latest in BlackBerry Phones
BlackBerry Torch
How I retrieved 10-year-old photos from a classic BlackBerry Torch
BlackBerry
OnwardMobility shuts down and ends the 5G BlackBerry dream
BlackBerry Key2 LE
Blackberry 5G won't ever release, report claims
BlackBerry Pearl
5 things BlackBerry phones got right (and 5 things they didn’t)
BlackBerry Key2 LE in a hand
BlackBerry 5G phone is still coming – and possibly soon
Astro Slide
Waiting for the Blackberry 5G? The Astro Slide could be a good alternative
Latest in News
An Apple Music pink/pixellated poster advertising DJ with Apple Music
DJ with Apple Music lands, allowing subscribers to build and mix DJ sets directly from its +100 million-song catalog
The Meta Quest 3 and controllers on their charging station which is itself on a wooden desk next to a lamp
Forget Android XR, I've got my eyes on Vivo's new Meta Quest 3 competitor as it could be the most important VR headset of 2025
Samsung Galaxy S25 from the front
The Now Bar on Samsung One UI 7 is about to get a lot more useful – and could soon match Live Activities on iOS
Marvel Rivals
Marvel Rivals will get two new hero skins for Moon Knight and Black Panther this week meaning I'll now need to farm even more Units
Netflix Ads
Netflix adds HDR10+ support – great news for Samsung TV owners, but don't expect LG and Sony to do the same any time soon
Klipsch Klipschorn AK7 in a room with lots of dark wood furniture and a bare brick wall
Klipsch just updated two of its most iconic stereo speaker designs, keeping these beautiful retro icons on your most-wanted list