January 23rd, 2007
Verizon's Navigation service reminds me of how dumb my smartphone (Moto Q) is
Here's a partial screen shot of the advertisement that showed up in my inbox today:
A fourteen day free trial from a wireless provider that makes millions? How generous of Verizon Wireless to offer me a free service that it can start billing me for even before my next bill arrives. Here's the catch. As you can see from the the other partial screen shot (right), I can elect to be billed $2.99 on a daily basis for the service (assumption: like a day pass on a WiFi-provider's network, you don't pay on the days you don't use the service) OR I can pay $9.99 per month.
I guess it depends on how often you need directions on your cell phone. If you're inclined to use a service like this at all, it hardly seem worthwhile to take the $2.99 option. If you take the $9.99 option and your wireless carrier starts billing for it in the middle of a billing cycle, is it really a free trial? $2.99? Isn't that what some carriers charge for ringtones (a few bars of your favorite song) when the same song can be purchased in its entirety for 99 cents? Oh yeah, the carriers often disable the ability to create your own ringtones from music you already "own."
Alright. So maybe some of you would opt for the $2.99 option based on only occasional use. I can see that. Another fine print item missing from the ad is that not all phones are supported. My wife and I have both of our phones under the same account and I'm assuming the only reason I received this email is because somewhere in Verizon Wireless' systems, it noticed that one of the phones (my wife's Motorola Razr… see why I picked this over LG's VX8600) on our account is GPS-enabled.
That said, it was also an unpleasant reminder that my Motorola Q which supposed to be a smartphone has no friggin' clue where it is or what time zone it is in. Yes, I guess you can forgive Motorola for excluding GPS technology from some of its phones. But, the fact that it doesn't pick up its clock time from the local regional network that's servicing it (like what happens with most "dumb" phones) is ridiculous (this "feature" is apparently driving other Q users nuts as well).
