Class Action Filed Against Verizon Wireless

Nuclear Elephant writes "Kirtland & Packard has filed a California-based class action suit against Verizon Wireless alleging some of their handsets have been advertised to have certain features, only come to find later that they were crippled for profit. With the Motorola Bluetooth Hacker's Contest ending unsuccessfully, many have taken this opportunity as a last-ditch effort to change things at Verizon." We mentioned the Verizon/Bluetooth episode earlier.

Comments

Waiving class action rights

[baywulf]

By chance yesterday I was reading up on an offer by Verizon. When I looked at the fineprint or the contract I thought it said I would have to waive my rights to a class action lawsuits and persue an individual case if disputes do come up. I wonder how many of these people are subject to this provision and not even aware they signed away their rights?

Re:Waiving class action rights

[TheGratefulNet]

anyone ever try crossing it out, signing your initials and dating it?

works on some contracts...

Re:Waiving class action rights

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be enforceable anyway...

Re:Waiving class action rights

[Sparr0]

works on *ALL* contracts. including EULAs.

Re:Waiving class action rights

[philddeax]

Verizon puts that in there to try to defeat national class actions, since some jurisdictions (think consumer unfriendly states (texas ect.) may uphold that provision as being one of contract. I know for certain that California finds such provisions unconscionable.

If they can create as many legal differences as possible as how the contract is interpreted, they can forstall a national (huge) class action at the class certification stage.

I agree with the previous poster -- cross off and initial any portion of a wireless contract that you do not agree with. the worst that can happen is that the 7.25 an hour salesperson tells you that you cannot do it.

Re:Waiving class action rights

[Anonymous Coward]

What does "ect." mean?

Re:Waiving class action rights

[Kizzle]

This is interesting. Can you provide a link with more information? I tried looking this up but I'm not sure what to look for.

Re:Waiving class action rights

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be valid for all contracts. I see no reason why it wouldn't hold up in court. I know I routinely cross-out, initial and date things I don't like in contracts. I've never had to test it in court though.

Re:Waiving class action rights

[Alsee]

works on *ALL* contracts. including EULAs.

Ok, but now what do I do about this white-out all over my screen?

-

Re:Waiving class action rights

[eno2001]

Wow. You're either a grammar nazi, or incredibly thick. Everyone knows what was MEANT by that: "et cetera". I find it so amazing that there are people so lacking in critical thinking skills that they can't read past the text. The other possibility looms that language has evolved and Ect. is an abbr. for Etoplasm. ;P But I doubt that's the case since *I* and many other people understand context. If you have nothing better to do than sit around and pick at other people's grammar, I suggest you get a new hobby.

I am convinced

[sk8dork]

it is time to file a lawsuit against something...i feel left out after all these articles this morning.

I fully support this lawsuit

[Free_Trial_Thinking]

I just wanted to express my support for this lawsuit. What a great idea!

If anyone knows ways to get involved, or to help this effort, please tell.

Lastly, I find the general plight of cell phones particularly tragic. Every phone I've ever owned has been crippled in serious ways just like the article mentions. People, cell phones are the future PC's. It's great that we have linux, free software, etc for today's personal computer, and yet before we've even finished freeing the personal computer, they're becoming obselete(exageration) to mobile devices. When will have have a truly open and standards based cell phone?
My only idea so far is to have a source-forge type of place for consumer electronics, where people can collaberate and at least create the designs for "freer" phones. Perhaps there could be a hardware specific GPL?

Discuss, discuss, I'd love to hear your inights on this, /.

Re:I fully support this lawsuit

[jc42]

Discuss, discuss, I'd love to hear your inights on this, /.

Well, there is one major problem with an open/free "smartphone": How do you go about getting your packets through the cell-phone system? The frequencies are owned by corporations like Verizon, and you can only communicate if you use their approved equipment.

It's true that a PDA can contain a wifi card, but at least in North America, that only works in much less than 1% of the landscape, and in most places, you first have to negotiate access through an access point, and if you move 100 meters, you have to do it again, paying in full each time. If wifi access were universal, you could use VoIP on top of it and be done with the phone system. But not this year.

You can do IP across most cell-phone channels now, too, but you can only do it with equipment approved by whatever carrier owns that channel at the spot you're standing, and there's no way you'll get approval for your own toy.

A couple of decades ago, the US government ended the "no foreign attachments" rule of the phone companies. There was a huge explosion of new telephone gadgetry, to everyone's profit (including the phone companies who fought the change). We currently have a "no foreign attachments" rule in effect for cell phones, which means that we can't develop anything on our own. We have to wait breathlessly for the phone companies to tell us what we're allowed to use.

Maybe some day this will change, too, and we'll suddenly find the cell-phone system as useful as it should be. Or maybe the wifi system will expand to full coverage.

But it probably won't happen this year.

Re:I fully support this lawsuit

[squiggleslash]

Well, there is one major problem with an open/free "smartphone": How do you go about getting your packets through the cell-phone system? The frequencies are owned by corporations like Verizon, and you can only communicate if you use their approved equipment.

The solution is to stick to operators that use standards that do not permit these kinds of lock-ins. Unfortunately, Qualcomm, in its efforts to whore its technology to get it accepted, made the selling feature that IS-95 would, essentially, make it easy for phone companies to lock users to specific approved equipment, rather than give that control to end users.* Other standards, notably GSM, have always leaned the other way, supporting a concept called "personal mobility".

The GSM operators in the US, like elsewhere, will happily take you on using any equipment of your chosing that's compatable with the network. If it's GSM1900 or GSM850, it'll work on any 1900MHz or 850MHz GSM network in the US as long as an appropriate SIM card is in the phone.

It's expensive to get a phone that's "unlocked" (doesn't refuse SIMs from operators other than the network that sold the phone), but it's not impossibly so.

Cingular and T-Mobile USA are currently the two largest GSM operators in the US. Cingular uses a mix of 850 and 1900MHz, T-Mobile just 1900MHz. They're both reasonably good with plans competitive with those of Verizons, but check out the experience of people you know on those networks in the areas you want to use them as coverage varies with any network.

* (Off-topic CDMA rant: This, incidentally, is a crying shame. Qualcomm's supporters initially claimed no mobile users actually wanted personal mobility, then argued it would be illegal to implement in the US, then finally, when Qualcomm implemented it as an optional extra, argued that it was perfectly reasonable to make it optional because those kinds of decisions should, for reasons unknown, be the choice of the network operator. Sure. Right. Whatever. CDMA is a really nice idea, it's a shame the major standard for it really, really, sucks, to an extent that the standard made the entire package worse than the competition. It's nice UMTS has adopted the technology itself (not the standard) and hopefully will put it out to people in a package that's actually user flexible rather than Qualcomm's bizarre systems.)

Re:I fully support this lawsuit

[way2trivial]

I think it's a great idea too, for my next phone.

I have a Kyocera 7135, from verizon, and it can do everything people can't do without paying.. if I have an mp3 or wav on my comp, I can make it a ringer or phone sound.. I can move files and pictures from my phone to comp by cable or IR or wirelessly, I can use it for a laptop modem.. in fact, every feature of my palm 4 device works as advertised and spec'ed

that said I fear replacing it a year-2 down the road for some clamped down MF that I can't do anything with.

I had no problem with people paying 9$ for a candybar phone being charged 2$ for a damn ringer, adding the required technology to the phone had to be subsidised by some method. -pay per use works for this...

I equated my full price purchase of a $499 phone as something that entitled me to a bit more of technical capability.. without additional charges..

I'm worried as hell (I almost bought the 710 for my wife) about my next phone and it's inability to make it do what I want....

Re:Who's next?

[Hallow]

Not quite the same. It's more like they put a nice big honkin' v8, but use software to only let you run off of 4 cylinders. For an extra $.25 per cylinder per mile, you can enable make use of them.

However the moonroof (OBEX), which is there, is locked out completely. It's just too dangerous for you to use (asteroids might fall in!).

I stupidly signed up with Verizon. When my contract expires, I'm gone.

Re:Who's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they put a Corvette engine in your Corvette, but made it perform like your Cavalier unless you pushed the button on the dashboard that sent $2 to GM for a few minutes of horsepower?

Or better yet... If they did the to your Cavalier after you put your own aftermarket 450 in it.

I need my eyes checked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone see that as "Kirk and Picard?"

Re:I need my eyes checked.

[Anonymous Coward]

*raises hand*

guilty

*clicks AC so as not to burn karma*

Re:Who's next?

[jc42]

I stupidly signed up with Verizon. When my contract expires, I'm gone.

They'll probably sock it to you then, too.

Several years ago, my wife got a cell phone through Verizon. We both used it, until it started getting a bit old and flakey. Then we each got our own cell phone, through two other providers, and cancelled the Verizon phone.

Verizon promptly added a $175 cancellation fee. It was long past the original two-year contract, and we hadn't signed any new contract. We just kept paying the bill, and the phone kept working. We should have been on their month-to-month service, though of course we never got any sort of paperwork (that we know of or signed) about this.

We've tried calling them to talk about it. Their response is to simply bounce us around between different people until the connection gets "accidentally" lost. Nobody at Verizon has shown any interest in discussing this charge. Their attitude is clearly "We put it on your bill, so you have to pay it."

Funny thing is, when we mention this to other people, a lot of them say "Yeah, they did the same to us."

So be prepared for charges that you weren't expecting, and which Verizon won't explain.

Maybe they should make money on the phones

[joemc91]

It really comes down to how these companies makes money. Unlike many foreign cell services, our companies make their money on the add ons to cell phone plans. They charge $30 for a phone that costs $250 to make but at the same time charge extra for a feature that the phone was designed for. Contrast this to the Japanese way of selling the phone for a profit and charging a sane amount for the service. Our companies need to realize that not everyone needs or even wants a freakin camera phone and that the ones that do will pay the extra money for the phone. At the same time please give us the full capabilities of the network if we wish to pay for the equipment (phone) to use it. The same thing is happening in the American auto industry where the Big Two (Chrysler doesn't count anymore) make all their profits from financing whereas the foreign manufacturers make their money from selling the car. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this will stop soon.

Re:Maybe they should make money on the phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this will stop soon.

Yeah, because they make more money that way. That's the only reason they do it. It's all about money, that's why companies exist, no?

Doesn't really matter

[bluGill]

You cannot sign away all rights. In particular the US constitution:

Section. 2. Clause 1: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority

Contract law arises under the US Constitution, so the court system always has jurisdiction. Courts do not look kindly on anything taking their power.

Now a judge will generally agree that if you signed a contract to use something other than the courts, than that something else is the first place to go when there is a dispute. However if you don't like those results you may appeal it to the court.

IANAL, seek legal help if this is more than a theoretical question.

A bit offtopic -- unlocking the phone

[PaulBu]

It's expensive to get a phone that's "unlocked" (doesn't refuse SIMs from operators other than the network that sold the phone), but it's not impossibly so.

Me and my wife bought our phones from Cingular because we wanted to use them abroad and GSM seems to be the most universally accepted. OK, so she was planning her trip to Russia and I called Cingular to unlock the phone -- no luck, "your contract is not over yet, can not do". Anyway, she takes the phone with her, goes into one of the SIM card vendors on a street corner in Moscow, he puts SIM in (maybe doing something else in the process ;-) ) -- and everything works like charm!

Did he actually know how to unlock it or were we lucky or was the phone not locked from the beginning? Who knows...

Paul B.

Re:A bit offtopic -- unlocking the phone

[squiggleslash]

For a time (apparently they've stopped), all Cingular's "World Phones" (phones that supported 1800 and/or 900Mhz) were unlocked.

Personally, I don't it as fair to lock a phone in the first place if you're going to force someone to commit to a contract (except, perhaps, for a few months while validating they're real), but that's the way it works unfortunately.

Re:A bit offtopic -- unlocking the phone

[3waygeek]

Actually, the new Siemens SX66 quad-band PDA phone (just a rebadged iMate PDA2K sans camera) offered by Cingular is sold unlocked. Instead of locking the phone, they offer price breaks for comitting to a contract -- $50 for 1 year, $100 for 2 years.

Re:A bit offtopic -- unlocking the phone

[the angry liberal]

Personally, I don't it as fair to lock a phone in the first place if you're going to force someone to commit to a contract (except, perhaps, for a few months while validating they're real), but that's the way it works unfortunately.

Sure it is fair. You didn't have to buy the locked phone. Buy from someone who doesn't do it.

That is, unless you want to convince us that your cell provider held a gun to your head and made you buy a locked phone. Anything short of that and it is your own ignorance that brought on the "unfair" circumstance.

Re:A bit offtopic -- unlocking the phone

[squiggleslash]

Ah, another idiot who believes "unfair" means the same thing as "should be illegal".

No, it's unfair. The cellphone provider is making you pay the full cost, over time, for a phone that could work on any network but is locked to their's.

Quit it with the moronic psuedo-libertarianism. Just because someone can go to a competitor doesn't mean that any action on your part is decent, reasonable, honest, and fair. And we shouldn't live in a society that believes every issue of reasonable dealing should be dealt with legally.

Class action lawsuits

[Gogo Dodo]

It seems that the only people who "win" in class action lawsuits are the lawyers when they collect their huge fees. The consumers of the class usually get stuck with something they don't want or is of such small value that it's not worth it.

Re:Class action lawsuits

[Detritus]

That's true, but one benefit of the lawsuit is that the company usually changes its behavior, correcting the problem that triggered the lawsuit.

Re:Class action lawsuits

[spikedvodka]

No specific names here, but I work for a company that changed part of it's business after a class action lawsuit... and guess what, still nobody's happy.

Re:Who's next?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

We've tried calling them to talk about it. Their response is to simply bounce us around between different people until the connection gets "accidentally" lost. Nobody at Verizon has shown any interest in discussing this charge. Their attitude is clearly "We put it on your bill, so you have to pay it."

And you let it go? I had something similar happen to me. My cable company tried to charge me for a cable modem that I never returned when I quit the service. Of course since I was using my own, I never got one from them. Obviously no one there is willing to say you don't have to pay for it, or if they do, it does not matter since someone else bills you again. Try this crazy tactic that works for me. Don't pay them.

You see it works like this, you don't give them any money, and they can go stuff themselves. If they call to complain tell them you don't owe them any money. Eventually they hire a collection agency, when they call or write tell them you don't owe any money. Check your credit report, if a mark show up, tell them to remove it or you will sue them. If anyone threatens to take you to court, tell them you'll see them there. Everyone shuts up and backs off remarkably quickly.

T-Mobile's pretty cool about it

[PCM2]

If you go with T-Mobile, they will actually send you an unlock code and instructions for your handset if you've been a customer in good standing for 90 days.

I have a Motorola T720

[alan_dershowitz]

And this is old news to me. This phone, out of the factory, has a Java runtime, and the ability to upload ringtones and pictures. By "benefit" of verison wireless branding, JRE is replaced with BREW, and every F*cking thing you might want to do with it costs money.

When I bought it, not a god damn thing said "this phone has a reduced featureset from factory specifications", nor anything that said "all 'features' have exorbitant fees." Why would I assume a feature cost me more money? I thought that crap was to get me to buy the phone in the first place.

It's pretty clear their business model is to deceive people into buying their crippled products and then nickel and dime their customers.

One other note: I bought Verizon's GPRS cable, which was advertized to work with WinXP for 20 dollars. I was using Win2k at the time, which worked fine. By the time I upgraded the OS, I would discover that the software did not in fact work with XP, but worked with a "pre-release" of XP at time of product release. I ended up having to buy the product again, which was a completely different set of software by this point of time (which is probably why I couldn't exchange it, plus it cost 40 now), so I assume that everyone who ever bought the first kit with XP was basically screwed. Thanks again Verizon.

Re:A bit offtopic - unlocking the phone

[Thomas Shaddack]

Did he actually know how to unlock it or were we lucky or was the phone not locked from the beginning?

It's very likely he knew. Unlocking locked cellphones is a big graymarket business. Every self-respecting operator of a small cellphone service shop should know enough to unlock at least the major brands, at least the half-year-old-and-older models. Reverse engineering of the handsets and flashing the proper patches into their firmware is a way to achieve that. Long time ago (7+ years), when the config still was in 24C0x EEPROM chips and reflashing was rare, it was also common to desolder the configuration EEPROM, rewrite some fields in it, and solder it back. Today's methods vary; a vendor-specific SIM card may be used, or talking to the phone via its connector, or via a service connector under the battery... many possibilities.

Re:Who's next?

[Tassach]

That's when you take it up with your local Public Utility Board, or sue them in small claims court for breach of contract.

Re:A bit offtopic - unlocking the phone

[PaulBu]

I would think that that was the case (and of course, I'd love to be able to chat with the guy while he was doing it, but I was not there). My wife account is that she mentioned that she brought it from US and her husband (me) says that something has to be done to it to make it work, the guy said "Do not worry, let me have it now...", took it, popped it open, maybe did something else, popped in the new SIM card and it just worked from that point on. So no resoldering, not even connecting any dongles -- maybe just some key combination was pressed. The phone works just fine with the original SIM over here as well.

Paul B.

just signed up with verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw all the nickle and dime things and I dont pay for them. I can freely transfer files to and from my cell phone at no cost. I can put brew apps on or off at my leasure at no cost. I do this thru a simple usb data cable and a program called bitpim. it's on sourceforge.

I had sprint as a provider for 6 years and for the last 3 I had nothing but problems and ended up switching to t-mobile. T-mobile has been the worst so far. Verizon at least try's to help you without charing you extra fee's at least so far it's been that way.

T-mobile wanted to charge me 70 bucks to fix my phone that I bought brand new 6 months ago because I get 20-30 dropped calls a month no matter where I am.

oh, and I tried to register instead of being an anonymous coward poster but my nick and password hasn't taken yet or something.

Re:I have a Motorola T720

[gstoddart]

And this is old news to me. This phone, out of the factory, has a Java runtime, and the ability to upload ringtones and pictures. By "benefit" of verison wireless branding, JRE is replaced with BREW, and every F*cking thing you might want to do with it costs money.

I have the same problem with the same phone here in Canada from Rogers/ATT.

Many functions have been disbaled, the web-access is set up in such a way as to require at least one extra request to their servers to make a web-request, thereby driving up the use of the internet access of this phone.

This practice of arsing the customer in order to drive up revenues seems pretty prevalent.

Sucks though.

FCC Form 475 is your friend!

[RCSInfo]

I had AT&T wireless do the exact same thing. Cancelled the phone when it was well past the contract and ended up getting a call from a collection agent. Any calls to AT&T were met by "that account has gone into collection, you are going to have to talk to them." Of course all calls to the collection agency were met by "This is what AT&T says, we can't adjust the balances" or my favourite - "just pay it and you can argue with AT&T for a refund."

I ended up calling the State Attorney General who sent me to this site at the FCC. There is an online complaint form that you can fill out and one of the options is "Contract - Early Termination"

http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475.cfm/

About a month later I got a call from AT&T who agreed to take out the early termination, but is still saying I owe them money for overage. So its not resolved yet, but at least the FCC form got AT&T to call and talk to me.

And I figure that someone keeps a tally of complaints at the FCC. Hopefully with enough people filing complaints against unfair practices we can see some change.

Crippled phone

[Dai Vernon]

I own the V710 and for the most part it is a good phone. I bought it knowing that BT was crippled; I figured on having the phone for the two years and within that time frame Verizon would break down and turn on OBEX (or someone hack it.)Also I like the free wap feature.

I don't know if this is old news on /. but nuclear elephant had a cash prize for anyone that hacks OBEX on V710. No one could although there are a lot of cool hacks that were posted. Especially Super Dave's.

http://www.nuclearelephant.com/papers/v710hackers. html

Being from Mass. I have to rely on Verizon as their service is the best (I haven't tried ATT/Cingular since the merge.)

I would join a suit if one came about in MA just to stick it to them and maybe get some free loot.

F Verizon.