RIM faces legal action following service outages

RIM has been sued in its home country following the series of outages that hit customers throughout much of the world. The suit has been filed on behalf of a Canadian user of a Blackberry Curve 9300, who paid $25 a month for 1GB of access and lost service for a day and a half. The user wants to be compensated to the tune of $1 …

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL@Canadians shitting on there own doorstep

Have to laugh, here we have a Canadian company that had a outage and who ups in arms to support them, yes there fellow countrymen. Rogers iirc is the main telco out there for mobiles and call it a stab in the dark but all these users, albeit this selective model of users aka the BB curve 9300 canook cutting crew(sic) have a contract with there mobile providers and not with RIM at all. Now as you can see given there demands, and there contracts is a situation were RIM will actualy be able to poo poo this one, more so as they have probably already compensated the respective mobile telco's.

Bottom line, my money is actualy on RIM winning this case, if indeed it could be called one.

[CaNsA]

"Oh Noes!!!! I needs my bbm!"

TBH i'm not surprised.

Bloody blame culture that we live in.

I reckon that RIM done a blinding job of getting an International Outage resolved, and not using "Hot-Fixes", within 4days.

Shit dude, some-one give them a medal.

[raving angry loony]

Typically understated...

You can tell it's a Canadian doing the suing. He's suing for $1.25, not $1.25 million they'd be suing for in some other countries.

[Naughtyhorse]

lol

so, some other country that uses the dollar as a currency?????

nope ya got me, where could you possibly mean :-)

[json]

if you include the lawyers fees, that would be $100,001.25.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think Canadians cared about their tech and IP...

Think again. Whether it was ATI graphics card, Teleglobe, Nortel, or Corel, to name but a few, they sold out or let die their intellectual property, only to see it be resurrected in the hands of the major techs in the USA or abroad. And that for a few investors to make a quick buck, willingly agreeing for their tech to be sidetracked because it was simply too good for their competitors... so reckless.

It's never really just one guy wanting 1,25$ because he couldn't use his internet for a day - all of this is just a sign of another future takeover/sell out - in any case the petitioner admitted that it would cost him significantly more to text message his recipients than with the BB infrastructure (paragraph 20). So RIM is great... He calls Rogers, they tell him it's not their fault so he sues the technology provider that makes him save money. Eerie and telling.

The motion is presented by "consumer law group inc.", a law firm incorporated last year. This is no consumer association, it's a one lawyer corporation with no staff in the jurisdiction where the motion was introduced.

God bless Canada indeed.

[Pisnaz]

Sweet. I had no power here for nearly 24 hours. Can I go after Ontario Hydro for my time? I sure hope so.

[jake]

Idiot(s).

Where is it written that uptime on your phone is going to be 100%?

On top of that, email is by definition "best effort only" ... The TCP TTL field exists for a reason. Anyone who "depends on" email to make a living isn't quite up on the subject of how TehIntraWebTubes[tm] work at a ones & zeros level.

[Anonymous Coward]

Publicity

" $1.25 (plus interest) " How much is a postage stamp for a small letter in Canada ?

This is all for publicity. Shame on the Canadians who instigated this. As Pisnaz says, from time to time broadband service fails, the occasional power outage will happen - if these are for a short time, non one sues (unless there is damage). These Canadians are really trying to put the boot in and generate more publicity so RIM's failures will be rememberd for a little longer.

[ratfox]

Great move

Send one of the best companies in your country into massive trouble for $1.25

[JaitcH]

Canadians suing for a good reason

In the past Canadians have watched as other country customers get freebies or credits whilst Canadians get nothing, as in squat. This is all to do with consumer legislation.

I personally have claimed for lost InterNet service as well as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) outages because there is little that racks up aggravation within Bell Canada between the Business Office and the operations side than a REFUND.

Years ago, whilst working night shifts on computer systems, we discovered that Bell was closing circuits off that were supposed to be 24/7. Another little case of telephone fraud was a private 'tie line' between Toronto and Vancouver that was also supposed to be a direct connection 24/7. Imagine the customers surprise when he learned from us that he had a regular dial-up line and he was paying big bucks for a full time service.

Telephone companies are old hands in the fraud business (read For Whom The Bell Tools Not) so Canadians, and people elsewhere should go for every single cent or penny. It's the only way they learn.

[Annihilator]

Paying whom?

Maybe I'm ignorant of RIMs Canadian operations, but is this person paying $25 per month *to RIM* or to his mobile telco/ISP?

I've been looking for an answer to this, but who in the retail world is paying RIM for Blackberry services? I can currently lob any old SIM into an old Blackberry I have sitting in a drawer and register for a BB-style email address, without any additional charge on my ordinary telco charges.

Apple now have iMessage (a borderline rip-off of BBM, but integrated into the SMS app), which was provided to me for free. Am I now able to sue Apple if this service ever goes offline?

In the court of public opinion, perhaps it's reasonable for RIM to pay something to their users (which I think they have, in terms of some freebies, much like Sony did) as they don't want customers switching to iOS or Android, but I doubt there is any court in the world that would consider awarding damages to a consumer for loss of an effectively free service with no or limited SLA.

[Robin 1]

Good luck

This won't last long. He needs to stop watching American tv. These lawsuits gain no traction in our courts.