Bottom line is:
- Apple considers you responsible of your own data, and if they loose your data, they do not feel responsible.
- MobileMe which was a paying service until a few months ago (and for which I had already paid until the end of the year), does not seem to offer even basic services that other free email services like Yahoo! or Google offer.
- Apple staff in MobileMe support are slow and completely incompetent. Every email sent takes 48 hours for a return which often is completely useless.
In any case, read what follows if you have time, and especially if you plan to move to iCloud. You have been warned. Apple is willing to host your data, but not willing to keep it for you.
I have replaced by ****** information about the name of the incompetent staff to protect their privacy, in case the name is his true name.
From: "Ebrahimi Prof. Dr. Touradj"
Date: June 25, 2011 10:09:41 AM GMT+02:00
To: internetservicesmm_en@euro.apple.com
Cc: "Ebrahimi Prof. Dr. Touradj"
Subject: Re: MobileMe Request: ebrahimi@me.com;
Follow-up: 156245052
Hello,
I checked and the recovered emails you are referring to, which are just a few messages, date back to emails AFTER the incident happened which cause loss of all my emails. As I have repeated several times in my previous exchanges both on chat and by emails during the last 10 days, I immediately switched my main email to an MS Exchange server, and what your engineers have recovered is of no use to me, because they concern messages AFTER the incident, starting June 16th, which I ALREADY HAVE!
What I want to have are emails BEFORE the incident, which happened on June 15th CET.
Is this so complicated to understand, and I should repeat it so many times?
I am very disappointed with the very poor service from MobileMe, an Apple brand which is a shame for your company which has the reputation of offering good products and services. I have the impression to talk to completely incompetent persons, who don't even understand simple things like recovering emails BEFORE the incident which happened June 15 CET.
Your staff caused loss of my emails because of a bug in your software or server, or maintenance routines, followed by bad instructions given to me from MobileMe support. It is easy to prove, as all happened while I was on chat with support and I am sure you have a transcript of it. I have them in case you don't. You took 10 days to tell me you have recovered SOME emails, which is not even true. And I remind you that I got several days ago the same email from you, and I gave you the same answer.
The chat transcript I have from the first supervisor I talked to on June 15th, was saying I will have my emails recovered in 48 hours which I replied to as too long and totally unacceptable. It is now 240 hours later, and they are still not recovered!
In any case. I went ahead and recovered my emails from a backup at the price of two of inactivity, because I really needed my emails for work.
Your incompetence is causing important problems in the progress of my work, and I could not sit and wait for you to recover my emails after 10 days, and at least partially recovered what I could from my backups.
But, the emails from the last backup I had (14June) which is the day before you loose all my emails could not be recovered.
So, thanks for not being able to recover my emails! I did it myself up to June 14th from my own backups.
WHAT I NEED NOW IS THE EMAILS LOST ON 14JUNE and 15JUNE, because I do not continuously back up my emails every minute.
If you cannot do it, tell me once for all. And I don't need email sent from June 16th. So, don't waste your time and mine anymore recovering them.
T. Ebrahimi
P.S. I take the liberty of sharing the content of our email exchanges and the chats with some people.
On Jun 25, 2011, at 4:43 AM, internetservicesmm_en@euro.apple.com wrote:
Dear Touradj,
Thank you for your prompt reply. I'm pleased to report that MobileMe engineers were able to recover some of your missing email messages. The messages are in the Inbox. To see this folder, go to MobileMe Mail at http://www.me.com/mail and log in. If you have Mac OS X Mail configured to check your MobileMe email, you should also be able to see the folder of recovered messages in Mail.
Please note that this recovery was an exception to the MobileMe Terms and Conditions, which advise that MobileMe members are responsible for backing up their own data. Apple will not be able to offer future exceptions of this nature. For more information, please see:
http://www.apple.com/legal/mobileme/en/terms.html
This would be the extent of the recovery possible for your account.
If you would like assistance using your Time Machine backup, you may contact AppleCare at (41) 0848 000 132. We do apologize for any inconvenience in this matter.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I will be happy to help.
Sincerely,
************
MobileMe Senior Advisor
-----------------------------------
Hello,
I checked me.com/mail and there is no trace of any recovered emails there.
Can you check again?
Regarding the responsibility of the user to back up their own data, let me make two comments that I already made the very first time this problem happened:
- The loss of the emails on my MobileMe did not happen because of me, but because there was a glitch in MobileMe and I could not synchronize my Mail application on my Apple computer with the MobileMe. However, I could see my emails by going to me.com/Mail. It was after I contacted the support using chat, that I was asked to follow a certain number of instructions, and this led to the loss of all my mails in inbox and other Folders I had archived messages.
I have copies of the chats with your support, and I am sure you have copies of them too. At no time, the support adviser asked me or warned me that I need to backup my emails before following instructions, or if I had a back up. Is this how Apple wants to convince me and other users to move all our data to iCloud?
You are willing to host our data, but not willing to keep it? Can you explain what is the difference between MobileMe, a paying service, as far as I am concerned, because I paid for it, and Google or Yahoo mail services?
- I have regularly backed up my emails with Time Capsule and in fact my latest backup dated back to the day before when my emails were removed.
So, I can recover myself most of the emails if somebody can help me with it. But I don't have back up of emails for some 15 hours prior to the accident. Who can help me to at least recover my emails that are in backup using Time Machine, by giving me step by step instructions? Who can recover these last 15 or so hours of emails before the accident?
Best regards
T. Ebrahimi
On Jun 22, 2011, at 11:49 AM, internetservicesmm_en@euro.apple.com wrote:
Dear Touradj,
Thank you for you patience regarding this matter. Due to the nature of this case, recovery has been a relatively time-consuming affair. We have managed to recover some email data, which is now listed on the MobileMe account and should be viewable at me.com/mail.
If you were missing more messages than this, please let me know and we can attempt to look further into another possible recovery.
Please note that this recovery was an exception to the MobileMe Terms and Conditions, which advise that MobileMe members are responsible for backing up their own data. Apple will not be able to offer future exceptions of this nature. For more information, please see:
http://www.apple.com/legal/mobileme/en/terms.html
To prevent data loss in the future, we strongly suggest that you back up your files regularly. You can create multiple backups of your important files using Backup and Time Machine. You can also use Time Machine to create custom burn folders and archive your mailboxes to them. The more backups you have, the more protected you are.
If you wish to leave feedback apart from the survey you may receive at the end of our email exchange, you may do so here for issues pertaining to the MobileMe service:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/mobileme.html
Please do let me know about the current data in the account and whether we should attempt another restore. Once again, thank you for your patience.
Sincerely,
**************
MobileMe Senior Advisor
---------------------------------
Hi,
Not only I have not received a reply to my last query since more than 24 hours, it is now a week since my emails on MobileMe have been lost due to reasons unknown to me. I was told when this occurred that the issue will be resolved in 48 hours.
Can you please reply to me and answer to my questions?
When will I have the lost emails recovered?
Without any response from you, I will be forced to take other actions.
Best regards
T. Ebrahimi
On Jun 20, 2011, at 7:51 AM, Ebrahimi Touradj wrote:
Sorry, but I don't understand what you need to investigate?
SInce 15 of June my emails have been removed form MobileMe, and this is not my fault but either a bug in your system or the wrong instructions I received when I contacted the support. I have the details of the chat with support for my case and I am sure you have access to these too. So it is easy to see this when reading them.
I am a paying MobileMe customer who decided to pay for a service that you can find for free anywhere else like on yahoo or google, because I expect when problems happen I receive a service.
What is so complicated with you taking 6 days now to investigate and keep saying you are investigating?
How can you even think about sending me an email like this after 6 days of waiting and give me no details nor any expected date when I will have the back up of my emails accessible to me? This is the worst service I have ever seen, and frankly a share for Apple.
Get the back up of my inbox and my folders, as of the evening of June 14th CET, and put it either on MobileMe under recovery folder or on some place I can take it from.
I have already switched from MobileMe to Microsoft exchange and emails from June 15th are handled with a different mail system.
Some residual emails still going to MobileMe are not important.
At this point, I would like to make an official complaint to Apple because of lack of service to help me, which has cause me serious delays in my work, as I cannot access the removed emails.
Please send me how I can make an official complaint and to whom it should be sent. Who is your superior and please send to me his/her email address.
T. Ebrahimi
On Jun 20, 2011, at 5:25 AM, internetservicesmm_en@euro.apple.com wrote:
Dear Touradj,
Thank you for your reply. At the present time, we are investigating the issue you reported regarding the missing email data. Once we have more information regarding the data in question, I will let you know as soon as possible.
Thank you once again for your patience. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I will be happy to help.
Sincerely,
*************
MobileMe Senior Advisor
-------------------------
Hi,
The server seems to be working again. I receive emails. But this is not the problem I was asking to be resolved.
The much more important problem that remains is where are my emails and folders from June 15th backward.
This is the issue I have been waiting for Apple to resolve.
I have now switched my email server and my main email address to an MS Exchange server. So, if the MobileMe mail server now works or not, is not an issue for me anymore. I have switched to another service provider.
But, as a result of following instructions from the MobileMe support when I contacted them by chat to report the problem of sync between my Mail application and MobileMe, all my older folders and inbox emails received up to the time when I reported the problem were removed from my account.
I talked to a senior advisor and was told I will be contacted in 48 hours which I did not.
So, let me ask again the same I have been asking in the last days.
Where are my old emails folders and inbox dating back to 15 June and before?
What is the status of recovering them?
The senior advisor told me they will be on my MobileMe mail folders once recovered under a folder called recovered or something like that.
Thanks for your prompt response.
Best regards
T. Ebrahimi
On Jun 18, 2011, at 7:06 AM, internetservicesmm_en@euro.apple.com wrote:
Dear Touradj,
My name is ***********, a MobileMe Senior Advisor. I sincerely appreciate your patience as the MobileMe Support team has investigated the issue you reported regarding syncing. I am sorry that the issue is not yet resolved.
I would appreciate it if you could check whether you are able to access and view mail at http://me.com/mail at this time. If you are not able to do so, and if you see any error messages, please reply to this email and include the exact error message text.
Thank you for your patience. I look forward to helping you with this issue.
Sincerely,
************
MobileMe Senior Advisor
