Flicking through the office Blackberrys here at Blurtit Towers, it seems that the problems have cleared up somewhat over night. But then again, we thought that after the first bout of disruptions was brought to an end early on Monday evening, only to rear their ugly heads again on Tuesday.
The latest official word from RIM themselves has been (as of Thursday 13th October 2011): "From 6am BST today, all services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as India, have been operating with significant improvement. We continue to monitor the situation 24x7 to ensure ongoing stability. Thank you for your patience."
But even with the apparent problems now supposedly over, people are still asking questions. What are Blackberry going to do to make up to all the thousands of potentially angry customers the world over?
One option could be compensation of some kind, but just how likely is that?
Well, not very. On the surface, this service outage looks like a major problem. But just think of the types of people ravishing the social networks with angry speak of how their Blackberrys aren't working. Young people mostly, distraught at the fact that they can't spend 24/7 checking their Facebook or tweeting their Twitters. What about BBM you say? Well, RIM's free Blackberry to Blackberry messaging service may well have been down, but that has stopped absolutely nobody from texting each other the 'old fashioned' way.
Plus, that service is free, and why should you receive compensation for a free service you never paid into in the first place?
The type of Blackberry users who you suspect may have been genuinely affected by this disruption - business types, etc - won't have been able to check their e-mails for a few days. Big deal. These people are intelligent and organized enough to have at least a second means of receiving e-mails. Come on, think about it. It's called a laptop. We've all got one.
So, no. We here at Blurtit don't think compensation for the disruption is likely in any form. On the face of it this may look like a complete disaster for the company, but networks of all kinds face downtime and problems at any moment, such is the way of the world. The only thing distinguishing this particular episode from any other is the apparent lack of information on RIM's fault, which is admittedly a little underwhelming.
When some thought is applied, chaos has not really ensued in the wake of all this. The fact that some teenagers somewhere couldn't inanely converse with their friends doesn't really warrant a payout of thousands, does it?
Check below to see a charmingly HILARIOUS top 10 of things you can still do with your Blackberry while the network is down. Our particular favourite is number 10: 'HAVE A LIFE'. Enjoy!
UPDATE: Blackberry users can now receive a small selection of premium Blackberry apps for the bargain prices of... FREE! Just head to Blackberry's homepage to find out more!
