I find it absolutely amazing and unacceptable that Apple can get away with almost a full day (so far) of downtime of their MobileMe (previously known as .Mac) service and there’s hardly any news/blog coverage of the event.

What was supposed to happen:
7/9/2008 8PM: Shutdown .Mac
7/10/2008 12AM: Startup MobileMe

What has happened:
7/9/2008 10PM: Shutdown .Mac
7/10/2008 ALL DAY: No .Mac, no MobileMe

Imagine if there were Microsoft (the evil bastards):
7/9/2008 8PM: Someone reports they can’t login to XBox Live
7/9/2008 8:15PM: The story is picked up and shows up on the front page of Digg, Google News, and a special alert is issued by CNN.
7/9/2008 9PM: Someone loses their connection to XBox Live
7/9/2008 9:01PM: Reports of widespread connectivity and scaling issues of the XBox Live service make their way around the news and blogging sites.
7/9/2008 10PM: Microsoft issues a press release acknowledging intermittent connectivity issues on XBox Live. Advises users to continue to use the service normally.
7/10/2008 12AM: It is discovered that the person who was unable to login to XBox Live had an expired account.
7/10/2008 8AM: The blogosphere is in arms against Microsoft for “anti-consumer behavior” and an “inability to meet SLAs”. Demands of refunds and class action lawsuits are suggested.

And… MobileMe is $99/year for email, calendaring, PIM, remote storage, and other services. XBox Live is $49/year for gaming.

Now, I realize things don’t always go as planned. But what makes Apple so special that the media is given them a pass on the whole incident?

WTF blogosphere?

Technorati Tags: Apple, botch, botched, downtime, failure, Mac, Microsoft, mobileme, rollout, screwup, Service Level Agreement, SLA, uptime, XBox, XBox 360

I have been a Petco customer for years and years and years. In fact, Quicken tells me I have been a loyal customer since 2002 (at least 2002, but that’s when I started using Quicken), spending $500 on average per year. And it looks like almost $3,000 of that is since Toby came home, less than two years ago.

In that many years, I have never returned a product. I have purchased many things my cats & dog did not use or like, but I always took that on myself and never returned anything. I often gave away the product(s), taking the loss as a cost of having a pet.

However, a few weeks ago I bought two pet fountains. When I got them home, Neela pointed out that the cats/dog would have to lick plastic to get to the stream of water. Cats and dogs love to get the stream of water, something about it just excites them. But given that licking plastic isn’t good, period, I decided to return them both and get the Drinkwell Platinum Pet Fountain, which I was actually looking for when I got these two, anyways.

Keep in mind that these boxes were unopened, the products unused, and my return well within the stated 30 day return policy.

When I got to the store, I realized there wasn’t a “Customer Service” desk. I asked the cashier where to go for a return, and she said to just get in the checkout line. No problem.

When my turn came up, I showed her the receipt, and said I wanted to return both the fountains. She asked why, and I talked about not wanting my pets to unnecessarily lick plastic. She asked if they were used, I said no. She seemed OK with the return, and called the manager over to provide an “override”. Odd, but OK, whatever.

The manager gets there and asks why I’m returning them and are they opened, again. I provide the same responses. He then argues with me about the cats needing to lick plastic on one of the fountains, saying there is a bowl they can drink out of at the bottom of the fountain. I explain that the water streams on plastic and that’s unacceptable to me. He argued a little more then finally completes the return.

It wasn’t much of an argument, but I was annoyed (enough to write this post!) that he argued with me instead of just returning the items, like I wanted.

So now I won’t be going to Petco for my pet needs. I will buy off Amazon.com (of course!) and try PetSmart a bit more. But Petco, you lost my business. There are too many choices (most better priced anyways) for me to waste my time being argued with by a manager.

Technorati Tags: consumer, petco, retail