BlackBerry Fails..... AGAIN (Another global outage)

Well I think I need to start considering a new phone. My BlackBerry email was down today between 9am and 12:30pm (EDT). I called T-Mobile and they confirmed that there was a global blackberry outage. It's getting pretty frustrating that I can not rely on something that I pay someone for for the purpose of running my business. Maybe they feel like they can just play with servers on Saturday but it happens to be a day that I heavily rely on my BlackBerry service for *MY* business.

The entire Research In Motion company is starting to scare me. Its not so much that they have all these outages but the company doesnt seem to have any concern about them and their response to them is to blame someone else. The outages, however, are starting to get plentiful and thats a cause for concern. If you need to do maintence let your users know that its a possibility so that the ones that rely on your service for critical things can make the needed adjustment.

The most frustrating thing about all of this is that the BlackBerry fits my life the best. Windows Mobile is junk.... Palm is dying (what's left of it) and Nokia still doesnt understand the concept of universal USB charge and data..... then of course the iPhone is AT&T only. So what options do I have?

I understand servers break but if they keep breaking this frequently then you need to come up with a new plan. If it's maintence windows then thats just as bad because your not telling your users. Above all else, be honest with your users when there are problems instead of blaming someone else. If we can't trust you to tell us about an outage all we can do is accept the fact that you break stuff and the result will be us blaming you even when its not your fault.

UPDATE 3:15pm: I was told that this was a scheduled outage, however, I still have no idea where it was announced. If it was scheduled then my complaint is that they need to find a way to actually inform their users reliably. Even T-Mobile thought it was an outage and they had no ETA on a resolution.