Research In Motion plans to give BlackBerry users more than $100 worth of free applications as a way of apologizing for the data outage that disrupted email and internet services for three days last week across Africa, Europe, America and the Middle East.
The company’s management has declared that from October 19 to the end of the year, customers would be able to download from a selection of premium apps on the BlackBerry App World Store, including games such as Sims 3, Bejewelled andTexas Hold’em Poker, the music discovery service Shazam Encore and a selection of hands-free voice to text programmes. BlackBerry will add to the current list of 12 titles over the next month.
Users will also get one month’s extension of their technical service contract.
“We have apologised 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,” said Mike Lazaridis, co-chief executive of RIM.
BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa were unable to use their messaging and email services for three days last week after a switch failed at RIM’s data centre in Slough in the UK. The problem later spread to Latin America, Canada and the US. Their back-up system also failed to work as planned, prolonging the disruption.
What do you think of this PR move by RIM? Is it a welcome development or medicine after death?
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Nigerians should be the last set of people to complain. MTN, GLO goes off for many hours and never even bother to say anything about it. So i think (NIgerian factor in mind) RIM has done well with this.
“Users will also get one month’s extension of their technical service contract.” – Does this mean i get a month free from MTN?