One critical success factor for e-learning is learners' satisfaction with it. This is affected by both positive and negative experiences in a learning process. This paper examines the impact of such critical incidents on learners' satisfaction in e-learning. In particular, frequent occurrence of negative critical incidents has significant potential of negatively affecting satisfaction. The focus of this paper is on assessing satisfaction with e-learning from a "negative critical incidents" perspective. The paper describes a satisfaction assessment model, called SAFE. The results of an empirical study at the National Sun Yat-sen Cyber-University are used to evaluate and validate the SAFE model. Based on the results, the critical incidents that affect e-learning satisfaction are classified into four categories: administration, functionality, instruction and interaction. Of these, interaction and instruction are found to be the most important factors. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)