Immobile dot Where?

So, my .Mac mail account has been unavailable for, oh, I’d say around 18 hours three days now. I can log in via the web, but:

• Webmail is unavailable.
• I get an “Your information could not be displayed. Click here to try again.” notice on the .Mac mail section in the main sidebar. Clicking, of course, has no effect.
• Mail.app either times out or gives the following error message:

The server error encountered was: Operation could not be completed. (MFMessageErrorDomain error 1030.)

And, of course, I have 2GB of mail there (backed up, most of it), and I was expecting a couple of important personal messages last Monday.

So, I have been trying to get .Mac support to help me, but the system still seems to be specifically designed to prevent that.

First off, props to Aaron, who is (out of the three support contacts I got during the various chat sessions) the only one that was genuinely helpful.

Unfortunately, I got better results filling out the support form. I input my Connection Doctor data, waited longer than 24h (a delay which, I’m told, is due to the MobileMe launch), and got a reply from Apple with a series of boilerplate troubleshooting steps.

I followed those, replied within the hour, and now, 18 hours later, I fire up the support chat window to ask about case #51006366, and I’m told that they never got my e-mail.

Amazing, especially considering that I sent it from my Google Apps account, which (despite the other issues that plagued Google Apps earlier in the week) has been working flawlessly.

I keep getting half my mailing-list traffic there, and e-mails I sent from it around the same time arrived at their destinations, so that particular e-mail being lost just doesn’t feel right.

So I now have to wait up to 24 hours before someone actually checks what’s happening, and without any resolution target.

Way to go, guys. Reminds me of last time.

I’m getting a very strong feeling of deja vu here, since the reply to my e-mail just came through, and the whole thing is redolent of my previous engagement with their second tier support: “Clarke” seems to have spent around zero time actually reading my e-mail (especially the bit where I explained that I had done everything they requested) and just asked me to do the same steps again.

And, of course, since they have a 24-hour “SLA”:Wikipedia:Service_level_agreement, I am now looking at the very likely scenario of MobileMe being rolled out before my problems get fixed (possibly causing me still another set of issues).

My educated guess is that their migration is floundering, since .Mac mail was supposed to remain available during the MobileMe launch, and my e-mail obviously isn’t (and may even have been taken offline due to some pre-migration step).

The whole thing is both tremendously ironic (for reasons I can’t disclose, but which won’t be immediately obvious even if you think you know what they are) and irritating enough for me to cancel my account tout de suite, as soon as I am sure that there aren’t any dangling subscriptions, web site accounts or newsletters that use my mac.com e-mail address.

Because US$99 a year doesn’t even begin to cover the aggravation (and I am positive I have lost incoming e-mail, since stuff I forwarded on to .Mac bounced back, and a number of people have complained of the same).

So, anyone out there still using .Mac and having the same kind of troubles?