RIM placates customers with free support
Chief executive Mike Lazaridis claims vendor is taking "aggressive steps" to prevent repeat of last week's outage
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is plying its customers with free premium apps and technical support by way of an apology for the recent outage.
BlackBerry users in EMEA suffered service interruptions and delays over a period of about three days last week, with customers in Latin America, Canada and the US also affected for a shorter time.
RIM co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis said the Canada-based firm is taking "immediate and aggressive steps" to prevent a repeat of the incident.
"We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience," he said in a statement this morning. "We have apologised to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence."
As an "expression of appreciation" for customers' patience during the service disruptions, RIM is offering a selection of premium apps worth a total of more than $100 (£64). They will be available through BlackBerry App World until 31 December.
Enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free technical support, further details about which can be found here.
Richard Holway, chairman of analyst TechMarketView, criticised RIM for its lack of communication with customers last week.
"RIM handled its PR quite abysmally," he said. "It will go down as a textbook ‘how not to do it'. They should have issued statements – particularly via Twitter and text – immediately and regularly. Even if they were of the 'We are still down. We care. Sorry' variety."
Lazaridis said: "Our global network supports the communications needs of more than 70 million customers.
"We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers. We have worked hard to earn their trust over the past 12 years, and we are committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect, today and in the future."
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