Verizon Sued Over V710 Phone

January 17th, 2005

From the L.A. Times:

Verizon Wireless misled customers about the capabilities of an expensive new cellphone and disabled many of the handset’s key features in order to charge higher fees for its own services, a lawsuit alleges.

The suit, filed Dec. 30 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims the nation’s second-largest mobile phone provider promoted the v710 handset made by Motorola Inc. as its only model equipped with so-called Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth enables phones and other devices such as computers and personal digital assistants to communicate wirelessly with each other over short distances.

But, the suit alleges, Verizon never turned on many of the handset’s key features — such as the ability to transfer data between the phone and a computer. [...]

The suit, which asks for unspecified damages, was filed by two California residents: Grant Opperman of Dublin and Timothy Davis of Bakersfield. It asks the court for class-action status, noting that many of Verizon’s 42 million customers may have bought the phones.

More power to them. Verizon subscribers should have full functionality in their Bluetooth cell phones. If VZW hadn’t crippled BT in the V710 to begin with, a lawsuit would’ve never been filed.

Related: My previous posts regarding the V710 phone


Filed under Gadgetry, Technology | Comments (10)

10 Responses to “Verizon Sued Over V710 Phone”

  1. George on January 17, 2005 January 17, 2005 - 6:45 pm

    This is a stupid and destructive line of litigation that will drastically affect our economic freedom if successful. Product differention is a fact of capitalist life. Granting consumers a “right” to use ever feature implemented on a piece of electronics is absurd and would drastically distort the market. Instead of cell phones let’s consider video cards. The company invests millions of R&D into a new chip. The typical practice is to then take this new chip and cripple functionality (in the bios, unsoldered connections, etc) to sell it to multiple segments of the market at different price points. The manufacturer may further sell accessories to later enable some of the unaccessible functionality (i.e. htdv dongles). Unless Verizon actually advertised that their service provided all of the features available in the V710 (explicitly stating no extra charges or required accessories) I fail to see what exactly they did wrong.

    P.S. You should have a graphic shoiwing the difference between 0 and O on the comment codes, becuase you’ll lose your comment if you type the wrong one.

  2. D.C. Thornton on January 17, 2005 January 17, 2005 - 8:20 pm

    Your point is taken. As for the crippling process, it is software-based.

    Personally, another capitalist approach that dissatisfied VZW customers should take is to cancel their cell phone services and find another carrier that provides full Bluetooth features on their Bluetooth phones (which is the route I took months ago). For most VZW subscribers, they’ll have to wait for their contracts to expire or pay a cancellation penalty fee.

    I’ll look into adjusting the posting code generator. It’s an anti-spam tool; however no tool is perfect.

  3. BH on January 17, 2005 January 17, 2005 - 9:33 pm

    I disagree. It was dishonest for Verizon to do this. Motorla is advertising its V710 as bluetooth enabled. You hear Verizon supoprts this phone. There is no reason to think that shouldn’t be able bluetooth with Verizon service. And now you are stuck with less than what wanted for the duration of your contract, or pay a steep penalty to get out. Lastly verizon doesn’t even have level of service where the bluetook is enabled. That is because they want you to use the slower, but more expensive network they have set up to send pictures and data to you computer. Just Bad Bad business.

  4. Corey on January 17, 2005 January 17, 2005 - 11:12 pm

    I’m rather on the fence about this particular situation. I work for a cellphone manufacturer here in California and Verizon is one of our customers. The entire reason that Verizon has asked Motorola to limit the functionality of the handset is so that Verizon can maintain the revenue stream it created in the text/picture/video messaging market.

    All wireless telephone companies are very protective of their revenue streams, even if it means screwing over their customers by limiting functionality. Verizon made no express guarantees or warranties when it sold the phone. Was this practice nice? Nope. Fair? Not really. Illegal? Absolutely not.

    Moreover, Verizon has a set of requirements that any phone must meet before they sell it. Because of this, I’m glad Verizon was named in the suit and not Motorola.

  5. George on January 18, 2005 January 18, 2005 - 9:04 am

    While I feel sympathy for the people who entered bad contracts because the phone didn’t meet their expectation, ultimately the situation will be resolved by customers who feel they didn’t get enough product for their money switching carriers. With number portability available these days, Verizon ought to face a mass exodous of angry V710 customers as their contracts expire. If their data shows the average V710 customer is very profitable (usually people buying $400 phones are) and there is widespread discontent they will probably make a response to keep thier business around the time a lot of contracts come up. In the end they’ll probably authorize their reps to offer secret call plans to disappointed customers.

  6. DarkStar on January 18, 2005 January 18, 2005 - 4:35 pm

    I don’t care one way or the other, though I have a soft spot for small companies sticking it to verizon.

    The things they do to their suppliers whould make WalMart suppliers grateful they don’t have to deal with Verizon.

  7. George on January 20, 2005 January 20, 2005 - 5:44 am

    Pretty much counting the days until my contract’s up in March …

  8. Tavares Forby on January 20, 2005 January 20, 2005 - 3:07 pm

    If Verizon disabled most of a phone’s features, than maybe they should not sell the phone in the first place. Or, they should be upfront and tell people off the back that these features are disabled. But being sued, I think that is a little overboard…

  9. gutenTagmoto80 on January 30, 2005 January 30, 2005 - 5:08 pm

    I am one of those suckers who bought the V710, and yes, I’m very disappointed. My father works for motorola and knew the real potential that this phone has. He even showed me one months before it was to be released and told me all about it. So, on my college budget, I went and shelled out the BIG bucks to verizon and signed a brand new 2 year contract for my “dream” phone. Well, I can’t email, I can’t send pictures to anyone except Verizon customers and verizon’s cheesy website (and that costs 3 dollars for only 20 per month). I can’t link up to my computer, which means if I want a new ring tone, I have to pay verizon so I can rent it (not even own it!). And their selection stinks. They plastered the “get it now” feature all over the menus on the phone so I would hopefully give them more money. Pretty much, I’ve got a mid to low level phone that cost me top dollar. They say that they have a “software update” coming out anytime now. Their customer service said it would be out in November, and here it is January. But I’ve read on several internet sites that they are not going to enable OBEX in the update, and it’ll probably be just stupid menu features or something like that. But, the voice recognition on the v710 is the best, hands down. And, I can use my blue tooth wireless headset with it nicely. The speaker phone is excellent as well, and the screen is nice and big. Also, the outside screen is bigger than most normal screens on other phones too. Yet, I’m constantly considering cancelling my contract and paying the steep cancellation fee with the money I get from selling my v710 on ebay, to some other poor sod who can only use it with Verizon. So, I probably won’t pass the torch of discontent on, and I’ll just sulk my way through another 19 months of my contract.

  10. Wayward Packet on February 6, 2005 February 6, 2005 - 9:33 am

    For the Week of 2/6/05
    Gadget BoyStrikes Again:The Sony Ericsson T637 For a while now I’ve been a little unhappy with my cell phone, an older Sony Ericsson T68i. Through the years both the antenna and sound had gotten to were I couldn’t really trust…

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