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...

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: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?

[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.

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.

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: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.

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.