Subscribing to MobileMe? Then read this

Many of you know that when MobileMe (me.com) was launched, you were able to sign up for a free trial to test out the new service.

MobileMe

When you signed up for the trial subscription you were required to enter credit card information. Well, it seems that the MobileMe trial will be ending soon. Many got an email today from Apple/MobileMe stating that credit cards will be charged $95.00 on December 7th. Many sites warned you in their posts about signing up for MobileMe’s trial subscription, you will need to go into your MobileMe account and cancel your subscription in order to avoid being charged the yearly fee. However, there is one catch that is surprising, and a little disturbing.

When you cancel your MobileMe subscription everything that you have on your MobileMe account is instantly deleted. That includes any mail, contacts, stored files, with no reminder of backing up at that point. You can cancel your MobileMe subscriptions by logging into your account and selecting the Accounts tab at the top of the page. From there, you can cancel your account.

Curious decision to do this. It may have been better to remind people to backup their info in some way, or at least be able to dump it to a simple format to keep for your own reference.

Posted on Dec 2nd, 2008 by Philip King in iPhone News | 7 Comments

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7 Comments to “Subscribing to MobileMe? Then read this”

  1. on 02 Dec 2008 at 2:49 pm1dubdoc

    If people would read the small print legal information, they’d already know this… Too bad so many Americans are lazy or stupid and don’t bother to read this stuff.. Besides I’ve been paying the $100/yr for years now.. Totally worth it in terms of your computers and phones syncing properly.. Nothing comes for free anymore.. Nothing worthwhile at least.

  2. on 02 Dec 2008 at 4:01 pm2Lazy American

    Screw you, dubdoc. Seems to me that any stupid lazy person could make this mistake. Geographic location has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, your brand of stupidity knows no boundaries.

  3. on 02 Dec 2008 at 6:43 pm3M. Steele

    wow… Lazy American. If you sign something, then you should have at least read it. And why should they remind us to backup your data before you cancel a subscription? If you’re dumb enough not to back up your data anyways…?

    All you lazy people want everyone else to take care of everything for you. Take care of yourself, take ownership of your own interests and bare some reasonable responsibility for your own dumb actions.

    - Another long time .Mac (and MobileMe) PAYING user.

  4. on 02 Dec 2008 at 7:09 pm4John S

    I have always thought that it was wrong to automatically default to a payment. The proper default for a trial should be to notify the user of the trial ending and give them the option to subscribe. Dot Mac did the same thing by automatically renewing your subscription. Even though you can usual buy a new subscription much less through places like Amazon.com.
    As a Dot Mac user and being pushed into Mobile Me which for myself is much overkill and poorly implemented. Its not about the money because $100 a year is nothing compared to other services we pay much more for and use less. But the fact that not everyone even uses some of the services now offered with Mobile Me. I felt a cheaper offering of email sync could have provided more interest in the service as a whole.

  5. on 03 Dec 2008 at 6:59 am5Jon

    As someone who just terminated a PAID mobileme subscription I would say that the branding of this product made little difference to me.

    I was more than happy to give it a shot, and I paid for the service for 2 years. Then I had a revelation. I can take care of my needs and even sync OTA with my iPhone for $50/year with Push eMail. Thank you Zimbra.

    They overcharge for what they offer and I had 2 clients affected by their “1%” outage. An extra 3 months of service was an interesting decision considering my client’s business was a little more than “inconvenienced.” They are still not sure they have all their eMail back. The web servers are the slowest I have ever worked with, and the transfer and storage limits are a joke for what they are charging. I pay $50 for push eMail, and OTA calendar and contacts sync. Then I pay $36/year for an unlimited storage space server that can host 5 domains, and park an additional 20, as well as install all the open-source software I want.

    Before you jump on it and say how easy MobileMe is, consider that they only provide support via eMail, and they are usually late responding. My Zimbra provider maintains an iChat account that they keep open 24/7 and they pretty much respond within 1-2 minutes (usually about 15 seconds) if I have any support issues.

    So the fact that MobileMe doesn’t bother to mention that they’ll delete all your data, front and center, if you decide not to pay for their service, is not surprising. After all “1%” get it done even if you DO pay.

  6. on 11 Dec 2008 at 6:45 am6Kurt

    Duh?

    Yeah, you have a trial which ASKS you for your credit card, then you can bet that your card will be charged at the end of that trial. This has been going on since before the internet. Where have you been?

    All your data is deleted if you don’t pay?

    Yeah, I guess so. Again, duh!

    — from a “not so dumb” american.

  7. on 30 Aug 2010 at 6:29 am7shade

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