FoxBoom!

MobileMe webmail is broken again. I still haven’t had the 30 day credit applied to my account. The support team are impossible to get hold of.

Fuck you, Apple. Fuck you for getting us all excited and not giving a damn. Fuck you for charging $100 a year for a service Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are all giving away for free, and goddamn you for not getting it even close to right.

Ever since MobileMe was announced, I’ve been evangelising it to everyone. You’ve made me look like a real world-class idiot. I am FUCKING sour. I am TIRED of the jokes. For the first time in my life, I’m embarassed to be associated with you.

I’m moving back to Google Apps, and we’ll never talk about this again.

I know I keep complaining about it, but I really don’t have anywhere else to go.

Really. $100/year doesn’t actually seem to buy any kind of customer support at all.

MobileMe has wiped all my phone’s contact details. All the support agents have gone home (don’t we outside the US pay for support too?), they don’t accept phone or e-mail support anymore, and the discussion boards are offline.

Seriously, who at Apple thinks this is acceptable?

MobileMe has deleted my iPhone’s contact details again.

The support team don’t accept e-mail requests any more, and all the live chat agents are busy.

MOBILEME REALLY FUCKING SUCKS, OKAY?

Apple have got a brand new service status blog for MobileMe!

Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date. [MobileMe Status]

This is seriously the best thing Apple could’ve done to get my confidence back. I said earlier that I didn’t know if any managers at Apple knew or cared about the problems, and this status blog really proves they do. And I’ve been reading snippets and rumours around the web about the MobileMe development and support teams taking the outage personally, and the blog really backs that up.

This is a leap in the right direction, and I’m really grateful that Apple are making it easier for me to be passionate about a product I want to see succeed.

It’s official. MobileMe is Apple’s Vista.

Mail’s down. The website’s down. Everything’s fucking down. You can’t e-mail the support team anymore; you have to live chat, and…

MobileMe chat is available daily from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. central time (U.S.), except on holidays.

I don’t even know if any managers at Apple know or care.

So I went to the support site to send an e-mail about resizing the mail columns in MobileMe, but this time there was an option to chat with a support agent instead.

So I did.

And man, it was by far the most positive support experience I’ve ever had out of Apple. Sarah might just be an anomoly, but I’m hoping she’s part of a whole new culture. Y’know, one that listens and understands and cares. Good God, please don’t let her be an anomoly.

But yeah, it turns out you can’t resize the columns. But I did get a link to the feedback form to see if I can get it fixed.

Since I’m just about to send my fourth support e-mail to the MobileMe team, I figured I’d keep track of them here.

First, I can’t find the option to use UK date formatting instead of US date formatting. Then I noticed my inbox wasn’t even in date order at all. Then I noticed the message count isn’t right. And just now, I realised the column resize grippers don’t do anything.

This is .Mac sucking cheese all over again.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… Apple’s technical support sucks.

The last song I bought from iTunes was back in July 2007. My credit card expired, so I put the new one in and…

“Payment processing is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

I’ve been trying again and trying again for months. I’ve been trying my other credit card, and my debit card for months.

I don’t know why it took me months to write to Apple Support, but last night I eventually did… and they told me it was my bank’s fault. But all those cards work just fine anywhere else online or in retail…

I’m sick to fucking death of Apple Support telling me “.mac is fine, it’s just you” or “iTunes is fine, it’s just you”.

This is the company I had to take to court because their support team stole my iPod. This is the company whose support team had to repair my Macbook Pro three times because they didn’t test it before returning it. This is the company whose online backup service wouldn’t let me restore my backups! And now, the company I’ve been evangelising for years won’t help me buy from their music store.

They build great hardware, but so help me, Apple’s service and support really pisses me off.

Apple couldn’t fix my .Mac Sync problem, so I had to manually copy/paste all my contacts off the web and back into my local address book. I’m fucking majorly pissed off, but that’s the way things roll at Apple Support. I hope I never have to phone those bastards again.

But anyway! The web address book doesn’t expose my contacts’ birthdays, which means I’ve lost all of them. If you don’t get a card off me next year, I’m sorry. If you want to get a card next year, you’ve got to fill in the blank for me.

Dudes, .Mac has eaten my address book and calendars, and is currently chomping through my incoming e-mail.

My new e-mail address is jon@foxboom.com, which points at GMail. I’ve shifted my appointments and reminders to Google Calendar, and I already keep my bookmarks on del.icio.us.

I’m pretty pissed at spending £69/$140 a year to backup my Really Important Stuff, to then have it totally fail. I’m even MORE pissed that my support tickets have been totally ignored.

The main point of all this is that my e-mail address has changed to jon@foxboom.com. Rar.

I don’t like my library getting all shuffled up and having random tracks plucked out, but these lyrics from Squidbillies sung out to me today and were too beautiful to keep to myself…

My dreams are all dead and buried,
Sometimes I wish the sun would just explode,
When God comes and calls me to His kingdom,
I’ll take all you sons of bitches when I go.

I’ve also totally caved, and will probably pick up an iPhone next month after I get paid. I’ll make it my little birthday/Christmas gift to myself, AND NOW IT’S JUSTIFIED SO I CAN’T GO BACK.

I’m also totally pissed off that .Mac Sync hasn’t worked at all since I upgraded to Leopard. I’ve raised two tickets a couple of days ago with the support team, but I haven’t heard anything back. Y’know, Apple make some great hardware and some brilliant software, but their customer support really stinks.