Earlier this week a member posted a thread in the CrackBerry.com Forums entitled Does Verizon Hate BlackBerry?
I think all of us tend to 'hate' our carriers from time to time (I know I was swearing to myself about Rogers a couple weeks back when I received my bill and had $400 in excess data charges...stupid iPhone use during the Smartphone Round Robin!), but it seems in the United States Verizon customers may have the most legitimate claim to their 'hate' by way of crippled features (GPS), lack of BlackBerry Software support, higher prices and typically less-cool phones (one of the downfalls of being on a CDMA network).
This week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Yahoo released Yahoo! Go 3 BETA, and while it has been getting a lot of positive reviews from BlackBerry users, Verizon users who try to download the application are met with an error message stating it is not supported. With consumer-friendly software being one of the RIM's inroads into the Consumer smartphone market, Verizon's continued lack of support for Yahoo! Go gives further cause to ask the question Does Verizon Hate BlackBerry? The forum thread is getting a lot of passionate responses - both against and some for Verizon. It makes a good read! Have an opinion yourself? Be sure to post it!
Reader comments
Question: Does Verizon Hate BlackBerry?
Verizon does outsource some of their tech support. They provide basic BlackBerry training but leave their reps to figure out the really hard questions on their own for the most part.
Verizon sees BlackBerry as more of a business tool that something for the consumer market and so they don't focus on it quite as heavily as their "Get it Now" phones.
I use whatever carrier has the phone I want. I'm with verizon now but if they want to keep me, they will have to get on the ball and carry more BB's.
I like Verizon. I have no complaints but I will pay the $200.00 early contract termination free like I have done many time with other companies in the past to follow my phones
I don't think Verizon hates the Blackberry as much as they like squeezing every dime out of every place they can get it. They are control freaks, usually only because of the almighty dollar. They do pass off a lot of this as "security" reasons, but I think people believe that as much as they believe pigs fly.
GPS is crippled in only so much as you have to use their app (at $10 per month). Bluetooth on "dumb" phones is usually crippled in an attempt to control where you get ringtones (hence the need for things like BitPim, etc.). Wifi is almost never available because lucrative data plans wouldn't be as needed.
As far as cool phones, I'm guessing it's partly (maybe mostly) because of the CDMA network and its limited availability on the global stage. Verizon probably also has some "requirements" that some manufacturers really don't want to deal with on every phone. Just guessing though. I thought about trying AT&T this last time around, but a friend of mine who has AT&T doesn't get the best of service in this area (dropped calls, static, weak coverage indoors). So I stuck with Verizon since I really can't complain too much about the coverage here. (I'll complain about everything else, though.)
I had no idea my “Does Verizon Hate Blackberry” post would generate so much interest. Like many users I was trying to express my incredible frustration with a service provider to whom I pay just short of $5,000 per year in fees who seems to do nothing more then just humor Blackberry.
But with two teenage kids who talk all the time and a serious habit myself, it is not the cost I am upset about. I want a Curve. I want a carrier who is not a year behind T-Mobile in adopting new RIM phones. I want my Curve.
I want a Verizon service tech who knows what day it is. Yesterday my 8703 stopped delivering mail, so I called Verizon. After about thirty minutes of reading tech pages to me that she clearly did not understand, I was told the problem was with my Exchange Server, BECAUSE I COULD NOT REACH THE INTERNET EITHER. That is when I hung up and called ASP-One at Apptix who hosts my Exchange Server.
It took ASP-One about sixty seconds to diagnose the problem and help me nuke the phone and reinstall the OS. Now get this …. The ASP-One rep then placed me on hold for a minute while he went to a storage cabinet and grabbed an actual 8703 and performed each step himself as he helped me to do the same. I was back in action ten minutes later. I wonder if ASP-One can send Verizon a tech support a bill.
What should I expect for $5K a year? The newest RIM phones? Tech support that actually understands a Blackberry ? Maybe I should just pay Verizon the $650.00 termination charge and move to T-Mobil.
Ive been a verizon customer for over eight years and I finally had enough of them. Ive been pondering T-Mobile for a while but what finally broke the proverbial camel's back was another rude customer service encounter. I had six months to go on my contract and paid the $175.00 termination fee. So far I couldnt be happier. I had the Treo-650 and it was a great phone but Verizon's data plan cost was through the roof. If I had a technical support issue, I was treated like a piece of meat and usually had to fix the problem on my own. Ive never had a blackberry before but now I have the Curve 8320 and I love it. I had one issue that needed tech support so I drove to a T-Mobile corporate store and the people in there could not have been more helpful to me. My issue was fixed right away and I was on my way in twenty minutes. That was a big change from an hour or more wait in my local verizon store. Sometimes with T-Mobile I have reception issues but to me, the cost of their plans and the excellent customer support I received more than compensated for leaving "the most reliable network".
I have a Sprint 8130 and tried downloading the previous one and had the same problem; so I decided not to bother with this one.