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RJCP

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
434
40
I've just used the iCloud feedback page to send an angry complaint. Odds are they won't read it and won't get back to me.

They must have a way to file an official complain, like websites such as Amazon have, no?
 

RJCP

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
434
40
Right, I'll write something on the App Store facebook page. It's a bit of trolling, but come on! 9h without a service that "just works"?
ffs...

EDIT: ok, this is hilarious. they've called me to check if my issue had been solved and I told them to check the iCloud status website. Then, they tried to sell me Apple Care.
 

mtehonica

macrumors regular
Nov 7, 2007
199
53
According to the status page it says that less than 1% of users affected. I doubt that figure.

Down all day for me in upstate NY.

iCloud allegedly has 125 million customers (obviously, not all are using email but still).... if it's only 1%, then that's a 1.25 million customer outage... I would imagine there are quite a few network/systems admins scrambling around the data center at Apple today :)
 

RJCP

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
434
40
It will lead nowhere, but I sent Tim Cook an email. I'll update if I ever get a reply.
Here's what I wrote:

Dear Mr. Cook,
my name is ****** and I live in London. I've been an Apple user for 4 years now and up until today had no complain whatsoever about your products or about the way any of the queries I ever submitted to your customer service was handled. Both my iPhone and my Mac make my professional and personal life much easier and I am honestly a great admirer of Apple's vision and products.

However, this morning I noticed that I couldn't access my iCloud e-mail account neither on my Mac or on my iPhone. The iPhone wouldn't return any error message but the OS X Mail application would return a "Service unavailable. Try again later" message. The first thing I did after that was to check the iCloud Status website which had no issues stated. A couple of minutes later it acknowledged the service failure, stating is was affecting a very small percentage of users and that service would resume ASAP. I then tried to sign in through icloud.com webmail, but it didn't work and I sent the report to Apple as the website suggested.

I waited until lunchtime, without any developments and still unable to check my e-mails. My iCloud account is my professional account so it is absolutely necessary for me that it works all the time.

I then called Apple's phone support (as my 4S is still under 90 days complimentary phone support), but even after I told the assistant I had already checked the Status Website, I kept being referred back to it. No explanation of what was going on, nothing. Just a mention that "our engineers are looking into it".
The assistant offered to schedule a phone call for 1h later. I get a new phone call (Case # ********, it's the only one I was asked to write down) and no answers whatsoever and I tried to explain the assistant that it was crucial that I had frequent access to this email account 24/7. No assistance was provided and the operator even tried to sell me Apple Care, which I think was absolutely out of place and extremely inadequate since it was an Assistance line and not a Sales line. He then offered to schedule a new call for 90 minutes later, a phone call which never happened.

I waited until the end of the afternoon to let the service maybe resume, but nothing. I called Apple again and was referred back to the website I said again I had already visited. Again no justification, nothing.

I know that services fail, but the iCloud e-mail service is too important to be offline for 9 hours now. It has caused me terrible distress and I am afraid that all the professional e-mails that might have been sent today may have been lost. Again, none of the assistants I spoke to could assure me that this wouldn't happen.
This disruption obviously displeased me a lot, as it is a service that's supposed to be highly reliable and it's basically an e-mail service failing which is something that shouldn't happen in 2012, or at least not for such an extended period of time.
However, I'm mostly displeased with the way that Customer Service dealt with the situation failing to provide a customer with a satisfactory or helpful answer.

Please look into this and make sure that loyal Apple Customers get the replies they deserve from Customer Service Helplines.

Thank you for your time.
Regards.
 

flopticalcube

macrumors G4
Down all day for me in upstate NY.

iCloud allegedly has 125 million customers (obviously, not all are using email but still).... if it's only 1%, then that's a 1.25 million customer outage... I would imagine there are quite a few network/systems admins scrambling around the data center at Apple today :)

That or they just don't give a ****. 9 hours seems a long time to repair an isolated problem.
 

mtehonica

macrumors regular
Nov 7, 2007
199
53
That or they just don't give a ****. 9 hours seems a long time to repair an isolated problem.

Agreed. I'm done with iCloud for email. Between this and the terrible web interface for it, it's too much. I've had Apple email forever but this is the last straw.
 

Stonefly

Contributor
Dec 26, 2009
165
37
Nova Scotia
Yesterday my cable provider email (eastlink) had a system wide failure with their mail servers and it effected clients through out Canada. Took them half a day or so to fix. Today I lost my me.com mail and it's still not up.
 

aguamaul

macrumors newbie
Sep 11, 2012
13
0
Arcugnano, Italy
Same here in Italy. Not sure if location has anything to do with it, but I've been offline on @me.com email since about 17:30CET. Was able to send messages, but all other cloud mail functions are offline, including cloud folders that weren't synced with my macbook prior to the outage.

Dislike...
 

yymca6

macrumors member
Mar 1, 2008
54
2
Montréal QC
no service all day Montreal QC

I don't believe that 1% crap, only 1.25 million people all over the world. Can't be true. And no error messages to notify us. Not really serious IMO.:confused::mad::mad:
 

tigres

macrumors 601
Aug 31, 2007
4,213
1,326
Land of the Free-Waiting for Term Limits
Called ,

All they could tell me was the next update to the website will be 6 pm, pst-

a status update that is.

Seeing as though I cannot correspond via my personal mail account; I am pretty displeased. In fact this year there must have been 6-8 times I have been off line, but this by far is the longest stretch.

I just don't get why apple cannot do the cloud.
 

RJCP

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
434
40
The good news is Apple has isolated this problem to just a tiny percentage of users. So for 99% of iCloud users the service is running just fine which is pretty impressive.

this is the most ridiculous fanboy comment i have ever heard in my entire life.
"good news it's only 1% of people not being able to access their professional email account and it's so impressive that a system *that just works* is leaving 1 million people around the world in black".

they don't even fulfill the updates. the next one was supposed to have happened 1h ago. I am terribly displeased and even more with the fact that there's not a direct complaint line.
 

tezro

macrumors regular
Sep 7, 2007
175
1
Been out here in The Netherlands too since somewhere in the afternoon.
Close to midnight, still down.

Bit annoying it is down, but the world still spins.
 

fenderbass146

macrumors 65816
Mar 11, 2009
1,456
2,547
Northwest Indiana
WOW so ****ing pissed. I have been battling with getting my Galaxy S3 and getting mobileme working on it. I even changed my mobileme password (which is why im pissed. I had a nice short only numeric password, now I have a ****** one with capital letters and numbers)

I didn't think it could possible be Apples end, but sure enough God Dammmit
 

Agathon

macrumors 6502a
Jan 19, 2004
722
80
"good news it's only 1% of people not being able to access their professional email account and it's so impressive that a system *that just works* is leaving 1 million people around the world in black".

Using iCloud for professional email = fail.
 

flopticalcube

macrumors G4
This is truly impressive given the massive scale of iCloud.

Not really. Its now been nearly a day of outage for an isolated incident. Given the scale of their systems, they should have the personnel to fix this relatively small outage fairly quickly. Reeks of "don't give a damn" to me.

BTW, the number of affected users is growing. It was 0.17% early this morning and now its 1.1%. 10% by the end of the week?
 

RJCP

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2011
434
40
Using iCloud for professional email = fail.

Do you want me to send another email to Tim Cook apologizing for being stupid and actually expecting they'll be able to have a functional e-mail service?

EDIT: oops!

iCloud: Mail & Notes - Users Affected: 1.1% - Next Update: 09/11/2012 17:00 PDT
 
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