RIM slapped with class action suits over recent outage

There is a reason why companies and telecom firms must put in their best efforts to keep their customers happy at all times. And in order to achieve that, they must provide consistent, reliable, and affordable services 24/7. However, despite a firm’s best efforts, sometimes unforeseeable circumstances or events cause a temporary albeit noticeable interruption in service. Take, for example, the case with Virgin Media over two weeks ago, when rats chewed through and damaged the fibre optic cables, causing a subsequent broadband outage in Scotland. BT Broadband also had problems of their own, when an exchange in Birmingham was able to bring about several outages and breaks in service.

In both cases, however, subscribers are prone to show more understanding towards the providers because it wasn’t, in all essence, their fault. This, however, wasn’t the case with the recent outage Research in Motion (RIM) experienced, which was due to an internal core switch failure.

This has caused many BlackBerry users to rant on to online forums and social networking sites. It has also pushed some of its users to considering other mobile devices, with one in every five BlackBerry users thinking of switching to another unit.

When the outage occurred, Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s co-founded and chief executive, had stated: “We know we’ve let many of you down. You expect more from us. I expect more from us.” He also admitted that RIM was still scrambling to figure out the cause of the outage, adding: “We don’t know why the switch failed and why the back-up didn’t function as it should.”

RIM has since offered affected subscribers compensation in the form of the following offer: users can download $100 worth of apps from the app store free of charge for their phone. However, this wasn’t enough for some of the multitudes of users who spent three days disconnected from friends and business contacts, resulting in a lot of lost revenue and business.

In line with this, several consumers from the United States and Canada are suing RIM, accusing the company of a breach of contract, negligence and unjust enrichment. The lawsuit was filed in the federal court in Santa Ana, California last Wednesday on behalf of BlackBerry owners based in the United States who had an active service agreement with the company when the outage occurred.

On the other hand, the Canadian lawsuit was filed in Quebec’s superior court, brought forward in behalf of Canadian BlackBerry owners who also had active service agreements with RIM.

Source – The Guardian