As MobileMe and Gmail go down, huge customer service differences pop up

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 15:28

Business IT - Networking

It has not been the best 24 hours for anyone who mistakenly thought they were at the cutting edge of mobile email technology as Gmail and MobileMe both suffer service failures. However, the customer service response from Google and Apple could not have been more different...

Every now and then, most Gmail users will appreciate, you experience the slightly longer than usual lag before your inbox loads in the browser. Sometimes you get one of those annoying 'taking longer than expected, try using a browser from 10 years ago' type messages which offer to let you see a plain vanilla version of Gmail in order for it to load a little more quickly.

Yesterday I, and thousands (possibly millions) of others around the world were simply told to come back later as Gmail went off the air.

I found that trying again within a couple of minutes got me my Gmail service, but it was erratic. Very erratic indeed. I could read my mail, I could compose a message, but I could not send it.

Todd Jackson, a Gmail Product Manager, writing on the official Gmail blog said "We feel your pain, and we're sorry." Apparently the problem was caused by a temporary outage in the Gmail contacts system that prevented it from loading properly.

"We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts" Jackson said, adding "We followed all the emails to our support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts."

It is good to know that people who can do something about your problems are actually listening, are actually giving a damn. "We never take for granted the commitment we've made to running an email service that you can count on" Jackson says, and you know what I believe him.

So what happened when MobileMe went down, again? The customer service response could not have been more different. Read page 2 to find out why...

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