Filed under: MobileMe
Apple adds another month free for some MobileMe trials
For our friends and neighbors in the UK (and elsewhere: see the update below), the MobileMe quagmire continues to fester. Infinite Loop is reporting that some users were erroneously charged to the tune of £121, and Apple is offering those users another free month of service.
Apparently, when someone tries to create a trial account in the UK, a 50p pre-authorization is placed on the user's credit card. (Not unlike buying fuel and paying with a credit card.) Unfortunately, instead of 50p, someone mashed the keypad, and users were billed £121 instead.
For debit card users, it's worse: the money is actually removed from your account, of course. Once the mistake is corrected it takes as much as a month for the funds to reappear.
Apple is, of course, refunding the charges for credit cards, and "working to have these holds removed earlier" for debit card users.
These users now have four months to try the service.
Update: According to some of our commenters, this affects users in Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Canada too. Wow.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
daniel said 11:37AM on 7-22-2008
Not only in the UK, also in Germany.
Now i can test MobileMe 120days... ;)
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tk2k said 11:40AM on 7-22-2008
I had a .mac trial i started before the mobile me switchover. currenly it says i have 68 days left of my trial which was supposed to end aug 21st!
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Gary said 11:42AM on 7-22-2008
Welcome to amateur hour. That is a pretty serious error - I'd be apopleptic if I discovered a 'free trial' had resulted in a GBP£121 Maestro charge. The handling of the whole MobileMe launch has been uncharacteristically awful. Perhaps Apple over-stretched its engineers with the simultaneous iPhone 3G, firmware 2.0, iTunes 7.7, App Store and MobileMe launches?
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Tony said 1:43PM on 7-22-2008
I'm not really sure, but instead of continually adding free days onto the account for the fuckups how about them actually getting it working? As I write both incoming and outgoing mail on mobileme are down.. the smtp server is only accepting port 587 requests again, and mail sent via it never arrives at the destination... and mail sent to the account from outside never arrives.
At this rate I'll be getting my money back for the remaining months.
Mike said 11:43AM on 7-22-2008
Apple has just shut down the discussion boards relating to MobileMe.
I suppose I'm lucky. My email was working fine until 7:30 Eastern Time this morning and now is only sporadically sending and receiving mail. It's frustrating that nobody at Apple is stepping up to take responsibility and publicly address this problem.
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atuck said 11:46AM on 7-22-2008
What a Fustercluck! Looks like bad design leads to bad performance.
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iceman said 11:57AM on 7-22-2008
my german full member account just got 30 days once after the first apology email from apple.
i hope mobileme will soon work as advertised. i still miss the share files button in the idisk menu
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Go Get Her Ray said 12:01PM on 7-22-2008
Apple has pulled the discussion boards on the support site... hmmm....
MobileMe is a disgrace. I was proud of having a .mac email address... now I'm wondering which is more embarassing - .me or .aol???
Meanwhile, I STILL have no email since last Friday!!!
If you, too, are unhappy with your MobileMess experience, please go over to Amazon and rate/review the product. I'm sure the potential sales of MobileMess through Amazon is big enough to get Apple's attention.
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Oliver said 12:01PM on 7-22-2008
i'm here the good ol' US of A, and apple charged me $1.13 from my debit card... wtf...
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pasch said 12:34PM on 7-22-2008
I was also billed $1.13 when signing up for the free trial (actually, since my request didn't go through the first two times I tried, the charge appeared three times on my credit card statement). BUT (and this is a big but) the charges only appeared as pending and disappeared within a few days, i.e., they only put a hold on the card to verify the account. I am ok with that.
Kev Orng said 1:06PM on 7-22-2008
I think they have to charge a token amount (usually a dollar) to preapprove this or that... it's in the trial page details, look it up. The extra 13 cents... your local sales tax maybe?
JoshK said 12:03PM on 7-22-2008
This is the worst thing I've ever seen from Apple. What an utter failure and disappoint this MobileMe launch has been. I agree with Gary, Apple is overstretching itself without it expanding (which it probably doesn't want to do so it doesn't become Microsoft). This is unacceptable and embarassing to watch. Apple is going through some major growing pains.
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WiLLiE said 12:31PM on 7-22-2008
It happened to me to, and i'm in Sweden. Currently I have 108 days to go on my trial.
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Jimmy Cappaert said 12:42PM on 7-22-2008
In Belgium too. I was also billed 121 EUR and got an email from Apple. Also my trial was extended with another month.
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Aaron said 12:43PM on 7-22-2008
I've experienced the same with my Canadian MobileMe account. My trial subscription now expires November 8, 2008.
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iamwatson said 1:48PM on 7-22-2008
Wow!!! I would be sooo pissed! Apple is kinda blowin it...But ill stick by them. I just wish I could actually buy an iphone 3g and not some strange pre-order bullshit from at&t.
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Sonyc91 said 1:57PM on 7-22-2008
Same in France and Switzerland !
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Kieran said 2:05PM on 7-22-2008
This happened a few days ago now. I was lucky I tried to sign up with a debit card but thankfully it didn't let me and I signed up via credit card after Apple had sorted the problem.
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Shawn Christopher said 2:07PM on 7-22-2008
So yeah, I was so amp'ed about the 2.0 release and trying to make my life easier, I bought MobileMe in the store ~2nd day it came out....*sigh* it's been a disappointment on the mail side, and contacts by the way.
1. Mail - Can't use it. Just can't. I'm paying $99.00 for something I can't give out because I need my mail to be dependable.
2. Contacts - MobileMe started with a blank Contact list, synched over to my iPod and AddressBook and wiped out my contacts. Sad part, when I search for them, they're there...when I go into Contacts...I only have what I added after the "wipe"
I'm starting to regret spending the money now...
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Steve in Denmark said 2:13PM on 7-22-2008
Wouldn't that be 'neighbours', in the UK?
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