Settlement Good News for MotorolaV710 Owners

bluebanzai writes "When hordes of people bought up the Motorola V710 upon its release a year ago, Slashdot readers may remember many impressive features including the cutting edge Bluetooth features (picture/mp3 transfer, wireless syncing) as described on Motorola's website. However, when used with the popular Verizon Wireless cell phone service provider, many Bluetooth features were sadly crippled (apart from a wireless headset) because OBEX features had been purposely disabled by Verizon. Hundreds of people donated to a hacker rewards program to unlock the full features of the phone to the tune of $3000, but was never fully successful. Well, one year later, the Los Angeles Superior Court (PDF Warning) and Verizon have announced the initial steps of a Class Action Lawsuit that appears to be influenced by the user community allowing everyone who bought it before the start of 2005 a few options for compensation--including a refund up to the purchase price of another phone which, interestingly enough, is a lot easier to hack."

Comments

How about...

[aussie_a]

including a refund up to the purchase price of another phone which, interestingly enough, is a lot easier to hack.

How about Verizon just stop crippling their customers and unlock the locked features?

thats the problem with US phone networks

[riflemann]

This seems to be a unique problem to US mobile phone markets. Why the hell do they require the phone company's own phone?

In any other part of the world, you buy your own phone from wherever you choose (even another country) and just plug in a sim card from your chosen provider and it just works.

If any provier here tried to pull those tricks, the market would take care of the problem very quickly.

Is GSM actually getting any foothold in the US market?

I got the mailling

[bblazer]

I bought 2 of these phones from Verizon and was so upset with the situation I cancelled the service even-though I had to eat the cancellation fee. In the settlement mailing there are 3 options.

1) Current Verizon customers that want to keep the phone and the service may get a $25 credit to their bill.

2) Current customers who want to keep their service but not their phone may send it in for a refund.

3) Customers who cancelled their service and paid the cancellation fee can get a refund of the fee.

I am not sure why they just don't enable OBEX?! That is what everyone wanted in the first place.

Re:The MONOPOLY industry.

[Eunuchswear]

Being a yurpeen I don't understand this bit:

The phone would not sell because the carriers would not activate it for you because it is not one of their phones.

Where I come from the carrier doesn't "activate" the phone. I just bung my SIM chip in and use it.

Isn't it funny that your free market has produced monopolies that screw the customer and our regulated one has produced competition?