RIM at Risk of Class Action Suit due to BlackBerry Outages
The Consumer Law Group, a Canadian based law firm, announced Wednesday the filing of a national class action lawsuit against RIM in the Quebec Superior Court.
On behalf of BlackBerry customers who were hindered by the BlackBerry service outage, Consumer Law Group is pursuing data fee refunds as RIM has failed to compensate those affected by the outage directly. The Consumer Law Group claims RIM is directly responsible for BlackBerry customers' loss of email, BBM, and internet service from approximately October 11th to October 14th, an estimated one and a half days per user, but states that the company has not compensated its users for the inconvenience. The lawsuit claims that such a loss of use affected users' finances adversely.
“Anyone who was affected by the outage should contact our law firm at [email protected] or 1-888-909-7863. Alternatively, please complete the form at http://www.clg.org/Class-Action/List-of-Class-Actions/RIM-BlackBerry-Outage-National-Class-Action,” said an official statement from Consumer Law Group.
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What Consumer Law Group is referring to is a period time the BlackBerry service had technological failure in mid-October. Blamed on a core switch failure within the company’s infrastructure, RIM’s service had a large backlog of data. To compensate BlackBerry users, RIM released a press release offering those affected one month of free technical support and the free downloads of 12 apps. Consumer Law Group claims this offer was not a just compensation for lost service time.
Consumer Law Group filed this lawsuit with lead plaintiff M. Blackette. Blackette, who owns a BlackBerry Curve 9300, pays a monthly data fee of $25. Unable to use his email and BBM services, Blackette expected to be compensated for his loss of services and has since become disappointed with RIM. Blackette has already tried to speak with Rogers Wireless, who passed the blame of the technological failure to RIM. Blackette feels that he and other BlackBerry users deserve to be compensated for their damages, which for Blackette are $1.25.
