Learning with the Fang

Today I ended my many year relationship with Apple ‘mobile me’ (or .mac or me.com). Which is a pity because I really wanted it to work. The point of this post is not to bitch, moan or complain but to help me grieve and possibly suggest some small changes Apple could make to improve their execution of this brilliant service. From an industry perspective it is really important that Apple (and Microsoft) keep improving their online offerings – ensuring healthy competition for the ecosystem currently dominated by Google. This is especially important to me because more than 20 years of my career were dedicated to messaging systems (the hilight being my involvement with the exchange server 2000 team).

So, what happened?

At the end of the day, I just couldn’t find decent support with some tricky synchronisation problems with my contacts. I found myself stuck in an endless loop of online suport articles and self-help forums dominated by self opinionated butt-heads who love to use the phrase ’should work’! Sure Apple tech staff monitored, and occasionally posted on these forums but I could never engage with them, nor could I find an escalation path. I would have been happy with an online ’submit your problem’, ecstatic with the opportuity to engage with an online chat with an Apple tech (even in US timezones). Sadly, I found no such mechanisms until the very last steps of my cancellation process (ironically with the iTunes store at the bottom of the consumer food chain – not the premium .mac service I had been paying for).

After several months of not being able to synch my contacts between my old PowerBook G4 and the web based contacts I ended up with two horribly out of whack lists. Next I got an e/mail saying my credit card details on file at Apple had expired and I needed to enter new ones. At this point I decided not to renew and thought my out of date credit card would ensure my account eventually faded away. But no! – this is when the salt was applied to the wound. A few days after my renewal date I received an INVOICE from apple (via my .mac inbox). A local Apple staffer did intercept one of my whinges on twitter and offer to help (thanks Steve) but too late she cried. I let it sit there to see what would happen. A month or so later, I happened to check my credit card statement, and to my horror – the bank had paid Apple for a renewal of my account. At this point I got so riled up that I spent an entire morning on the phone, starting with the phone number on the invoice.

It didn’t take long for an Apple staffer (in AUS) to figure out that I needed escalation to people who could help me cancel my account and organise a credit to my card. Within hours I had an e/mail from a human in the mobile me team with detailed instructions on the process for cancelling my account and assurance that a refund would follow. Helpfully, my attention was drawn to the fact that the stuff on my local copy of idisk would go away and that I needed to back it up manually. There was even a warning about my DRM infected iTunes store purchases that would also self-destruct unless I changed the e/mail address associated with my AppleID. (Which was my mac.com email). Having followed the instructions to do that I was not confident and to my utter surprise was offered an online chat session with a very helpful rep from the iTunes store who coached me thru the process and pointed out the subtle point that my appleid would remain my old .mac email address (which is now associated with my gmail).

Do you see the symmetry of woe here? Had I been guided to an online chat via an email support ticket it is quite likely that my synch problem would have been fixed and I would happily renew for many more years to come. The final rub is that my new MacBook Pro should arrive this week and would most likely have synced fine out of the box.

Never mind.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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p.s. If you have a record of my e/mail address as mseyfang@mac.com, you need to change it to fang at mikeseyfang.com