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Monday October 5, 2009
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 When you build a phone around social media and messaging, don't tick off the people who bought it. That's the lesson T-Mobile learned the hard way this weekend, when T-Mobile Sidekick users complained ferociously on Twitter and other networks that their data services had stopped working.
On Friday, Sidekick users lost their services, including address book, calendaring, social-networking apps, and Web browsing, when the Microsoft-owned Danger had a server outage. T-Mobile said the problem would be resolved by late Sunday night, but the Seattle P.I. reports that all service has not yet been restored.
The trending topic #tmobilesucks stayed high up on Twitter well into Monday as many T-Mobile users reported via the service that their data services were still down. T-Mobile has been issuing bill credits ranging from $35 to three months of free data to customers who have called customer service to complain, according to Phone News.
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October 6, 2009 11:58 AM
my sidekick went out on thursday/friday night and I just got back service last night. The customer service guy I talked to said there was NOTHING t-mobile could do about it and that all my stuff would be restored (contacts/notes/e-mail), but that hasn't happened at all. And even though I have my 'G' back, service is sporadic and a few times it'll knock my SIM card out and won't read it. T-mobiles needs to get on that shht. I don't think sidekick users can take anymore mess ups.
October 6, 2009 12:48 PM
I for one enjoyed my Sidekick even though some design features left alot to be desired. Such as the usb port never could be used so why put it there? The address book isn't easily exported for preservation outside of Danger.
At one time T-Mobile was an excellent network and has seemed to lag behind other networks. The intermittent lapse of coverage left a lot to be desired... I have been EXTREMELY patient with t-Mobile BUT the latest (and lasting) episode tells me it's time to say goodbye.
I'm waiting for the HTC Touch Pro 2 by Sprint to be available for a reasonable $149 dollars before I cut and run into their arms. Mind you - I'd done the Blackberry route and I just really dislike the keyboard.
This outage is an outrage. If I could still access my account on my desktop that would be one thing. BUT I cannot even check online! This is TOO MUCH to take. I can imagine the paralysis some SK users feel if all of their business calendars and contacts were inaccessible - MAJOR FREAK-OUT TIME! So no - that is unacceptable - t-Mobile. You shot yourself in your own foot by not updating your technology and apps for 'formerly' loyal Sidekickers.
S'long...
October 8, 2009 2:21 PM
I've been lost without email and web on my Sidekick LX the past few days, but I could still call and SMS/MMS so it wasn't that bad. I appreciate that T-Mobile is giving me a month of free service, even without calling.
You can't really blame T-Mo, since it was Danger's servers that went down. Let's hope that the cause was them adding some sort of new features.
October 8, 2009 6:56 PM
I'm no VerizonWireless fanboy, but I've been with VerizonWireless for about 6 years now, and that's in no small part thanks to T-Mobile (formerly VoiceStream, iirc, in the Boston MA USA market). VerizonWireless staff attack outages and other service impacting issues like nobody else. The agents generally don't know root cause or estimated outage duration, but if they promise to call back, they generally do, and they will issue credit for an outage without having to fight them over it. Cingular and T-Mobile, listen up. I took my business elsewhere, and probably permanently. To ever have a chance to win me back, you need to have a culture that considers downtime evil and takes steps to avoid it -- including redundancy, where prudent. A way for subscribers to open and track a ticket on the web would be useful too.