Comments on: Subscribing to MobileMe? Then read this

By: Kurt

Kurt — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:45:54 +0000

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.

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:59:11 +0000

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.

By: John S

John S — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:09:51 +0000

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.

By: M. Steele

M. Steele — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:43:07 +0000

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.

By: Lazy American

Lazy American — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:01:17 +0000

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.

By: dubdoc

dubdoc — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:49:46 +0000

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.