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As a long-time .mac-User I was never really happy with the range of functionality Apple offered to its .mac-customers. Imho – compared to Yahoo, Google or any other local provider – the price for Apples service was always too high and there were always too much functions missing. But still – I used my private .mac-Email for quite some time and the service was more or less working.

Some weeks ago I got an email by Apple that they plan to convert all .mac accounts to their new Mobile Me service – with more functions and a totally redesigned web client for my emails. Considering the fact that I still hope to get one of these new 3G iPhones as soon as Swisscom is ready again to deliver, I was especially pleased about the tight integration with Apples phone platform. So that was nice news and we old customers even got an additional “me.com”-mail address..

So the day came and Apple switched the .mac platform to the Mobile Me platform. The mail did not work anymore for hours.. well, it’s my private mail, so I was not that worried about it and knowing that it’s not a 2-man-company but Apple taking care of the service, I was pretty sure, that some hours later everything will shine again. But one day later – still no access to my mail (maybe that theoretically in the meantime it would have been possible to login, but actually I’m not hitting my reload button every 30seconds). So I decided to contact the Apple Support (phone 0848 000 132 in Switzerland). After some nice but pretty long music I was told that they have no idea about what’s going on with the Mobile Me platform and that Mobile Me is supported only by email – which is pretty interesting to support a non-functional email service by providing support only by email. Well happy enough I contacted them with my Yahoo hosted martinopia.com mail address (which is also my contact address for administration purposes by Apple)… and some hours later I even got an email.. that my credit card was expired and they could not charge for the service.

Well that’s customer oriented! Loyal as I am I immediatly updated my credit card information online (all but the mail service worked) – obviously without success. In the meantime I got a standard email sent to all customers that some 1% of the customers are temporarily experiencing some problems with their mail and will get some 30days extra for free but the problem was finally sorted out. Indeed the mail worked again and I was confident that the Apple world is fine again…

Till this morning – no mail access. In my account they still complain about a non working credit card.. so I called again the support to check if there was a problem with my account because of the missing credit card information.. they told my that they “understand my problem” but that I have to contact them by email (which I did twice without any personal response).

I really can’t understand why Apple launched such an unstable product. If it doesn’t work stable why not switch back the old customers to the old – but working – platform? Why pushing advertimsnts with “Exchange for the rest of us”? Obviously “Exchange for the rest of us” means “no mail at all”.. perhaps that’s the real vision behind all that hassle? A real power user don’t use mail at all…

Till this vision will become reality I would strongly suggest to avoid Mobile Me for new customers till Apple really takes care about both – customer service and service level quality.