Class Action Lawsuit against Verizon over V710

I'm sure someone down the thread will whine that "people sue over everything these days", but I thoroughly applaud the actions of the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit. My Verizon V710 has been the source of such negative feelings and frustration towards Verizon. Overall, Verizon has an excellent product and excellent service (confirmed by Consumer Reports), but they have failed miserably with this phone. There are many features in the phone that I paid for that Verizon disabled and when I confronted Verizon with it, I got a basic "Screw you, we do what we want" type of response.

I felt pretty powerless after that, but now that some very angry and vocal customers are fighting back, and maybe my phone will work properly with my Prius; that's my only hope. I don't want Verizon to suffer or some group of customers to win a large sum of money, I just want my 300 dollar phone to do what it was advertised to do!

 

I love the Prius and the factory it was built in, (so) Tsutsumi. :lol:

 

I an will try to find the law firm and join in the suit. I am mad and feel very cheated. Their was to be an up date by November and that has not been released.

 

Name of the firm is Kirtland & Packard. URL = www.kirtlandpackard.com

I don't believe the court has certified the class yet and don't believe there is any need to join; everyone in the class will generally be bound by the decision except for those who decide to opt out.

 

I cannot help but wonder how many of the posters who criticized the class action law suit alleging that Toyota led potential Prius buyers to have unrealistically high gas mileage expectations are planning to be members of the class in the law suit against Verizon Wireless.

 

IsrAmeriPrius,
The natures of the two suits are a little different.
Customers can drive a car however they want and that may result in lower than expected gas mileage; end of story.

An example synonymous to the Verizon example is Toyota advertising a Prius with Smart Key System and Navigation for a premium. The customer buys the Prius with the Smart Key System and the Navigation; however, once he drives home he realizes they have been disabled. The customer furiously complains to Toyota; Toyota then claims that the Smart Entry and Navigation must be activated by a special software, Toyotatech! For only 49.99 a month, the customer can buy Toyotatech and actually use the features they paid a premium for in the first place... The customer is especially annoyed because he was never told that he needed Toyotatech in the first place!

You will likely be livid to the point of using bad words and ready to break someone's neck too!

 

flyingprius,

Not a good parallel.

VeriZon promised Bluetooth capabilities without specifying which particular features will be offered on the V710. The phone is definitely Bluetooth enabled. It just does not support certain protocols that buyers expected it to have; however, those capabilities were not advertised by VeriZon as being present on the V710.

Dissatisfied customers had the option of returning the phone after the 15 days (30 in California) free trial period.

This law suit is as bogus as the one accusing Toyota of misleading the Prius buyers about its gas mileage.

Just my humble opinion with twenty-eight years of practicing law to back it up.

 

I just sent a E-mail to the law firm. I am a physician and you can only imagine what talking to a lawyer means to the level of disgust I have at this point for Verizon. They have been nothing short or rude with me on this subject.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tempus\";p=\"64124)</div>

I think the following assessment, by the executive director of the Bluetooth SIG, is spot on:

"The Bluetooth SIG is very disappointed in this implementation decision and believes many consumers who purchased this phone for the Bluetooth capabilities are frustrated and confused as a result," said Michael Foley, executive director of the SIG. "Users have realistic expectations that Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones will work with their other Bluetooth enabled devices including cars, headsets, PCs, printers, PDAs, etc.," he said.

"While we on the technical side understand that certain profiles must be implemented to enable various usage scenarios, we shouldn't expect consumers, for example, to realize their phone does not have the OBEX or file-sharing profile. They just know they want to send a picture from their camera phone to their PC and can't. And they don't know why."


I mean, BT should be BT and fully implemented (either that or call it something else, BT-lite for example). Consumers shouldn't be forced to figure out which, if any, profiles have been disabled.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tempus\";p=\"64124)</div>

Look, I am as frustrated as anyone by my inability to transfer the contact list from my LG PM-325 to my Prius. I assume that Sprint does not provide the necessary protocols on this phone to enable that task for the same feeble excuses that Verizon gives for disabling those functions on the Motorola v710.

All that being said, this lawsuit is frivolous. Every carrier allows its customers to return a phone for a refund within 15 days of purchase (30 in California) and the phone does allow you to make hands free calls, as long as you saved some numbers in the car's hands free system from the call history logs.

These are the kind of lawsuits that give lawyers a bad name.

 

Whether the lawsuit is frivolous or not is up to the judge to decide. I don't have enough experience to decide.

I prefer to let the market work on this, but as many posters have noted, Verizon is unresponsive to our woes. I'd never pay to send a photo to myself just to get it off my phone and onto my hard disk, but I may occasionally send a photo when I need to send it to someone else in a hurry. Most of us who've grown up with the Internet expect to be the free owners of our own data. If it hadn't been made clear to me before I bought V710, I'd be pissed.

That 15 return period might not have been enough time for me to detect the problem (there's so much tech doc to read and phone calls to make first and life is busy).

I happen to live in a cellular market with many choices. Although Verizon would have been my preferred provider because of the quality and breadth of their network, I was sufficiently disgusted with their implementation of the V710 that I took my business to T-Mobile. They provided the Nokia 6600 for "free" (after rebates, tax, and activation) and I've been generally satisfied with the phone and its BT implementation. I feel sorry for consumers who can only choose Verizon.

With the Nokia 6600, I can move files back and forth to my computer, upload one contact at a time, backup all data, and so on. There are some bugs and frustrations, but at least T-Mobile didn't TRY to block features.

My sense is that Verizon's model is just wrong. If techno geeks want to bother with such features as moving photos, Verizon should let them--although not necessarily provide technical support if they've explicitly said "use at your own risk/effort."

 

> That's fine, except that many people were
> 'suckered' into passing the grace period.

Yeah, Verizon Wireless sucks. I was just trying to express why. I am glad that I subscribed to this list before I bought a phone.

In terms of energy policy, the Republicans are the worst and Verizon Wireless donated $720,706 to Republican candidates last year. It is a red company and I'm glad to support Deutche Telecom instead (T-Mobile).

I know that's tangential to Prius Chat, but I'm an environmentalist and I'm trying to be a good citizen in on many levels.

 

For a while today, Amazon had the V710 at $-20.00 after rebate. The dumping has begun (E815 is coming, I guess).

http://www.slickdeals.net/?pno=5669&lno=1&afsrc=1 has apparently sold out...

 

Here's the site to get in on the class action lawsuit:

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/...erizon_wireless

Also, here is the firm handling the case:

The Class Action Lawsuit is being handled by Laura DiGirolamo

Kirtland and Packard, (310) 536-1000, 2361 Rosecrans Ave Ste 450, El Segundo, CA 90245