Apologetic BlackBerry offers free services, apps to customers

Following the three-day failure of BlackBerry services across the world, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, Research In Motion (RIM) has outstretched an olive branch to disgruntled customers offering “premium apps” and other services for free.

In press statement, RIM explained that the selection of premium apps, “worth a total value of more than US$100,” will be offered free of charge to subscribers “as an expression of appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions”.

“Our global network supports the communications needs of more than 70-million customers,” said RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

“We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers. We’ve worked hard to earn their trust over the past 12 years, and we’re committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect, today and in the future.”

Beginning 19 October, BlackBerry users can download their selection of apps from BlackBerry’s app store, BlackBerry App World for a period of four weeks.

RIM has also offered one month’s worth of free technical support for customers who subscribe to its business solution, BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES).

The statement again quoted Lazaridis as saying, “we are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience”.

“We have apologised to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence. We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again.”

Last week, many customers experienced service failures over a period of three days in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa,

The service outages across the rest of the globe, were shorter, ranging from a day to a day and a half, according to RIM.

The Canadian mobile manufacturer says that global teams worked around the clock to contain the issue and minimise the impact to customers and that as of Thursday, October 13th, service levels returned to normal.