line of site

V710 turning into PR nightmare for Motorola and Verizon

I don't agree with the politics or sentiment of his last statement, as I don't know if a mobile phone has ever really been manufactured in the US, but this is the type of email/comments i get on a daily basis from people in my other weblog.

"I bought this phone (V710) in July from Radio Shack (RS). The main reason was to pair with my Acura TL. Poor reception, dropped calls, static, poor Bluetooth abilities, does not work on incoming calls in my TL. Communicated with RS, Moto and VZ. all three told me it was Acura. Acura refers me to Handsfree Link, Verizon never gave them the phone for testing before moving this to production. (This is done with all other wireless companies). RS exchanged the phone in Sept. Oct. I find that it is not the car but the phone. VZ bluntly told me it is my problem discuss it with RS. RS said discuss it with Moto. Moto states that they know there is a problem with the Bluetooth but do not know how to distribute the fix. No one will refund me the price of the phone that I bought outright and paid in excess of $400, because it is now over 30 days old. I travel nationwide and have the same reception problems in all parts of the country. My Qualcom from 1997 and My Nokia from 2001 perform better then this phone.

Poor picture abilities, can't transfer files form phone to my laptop using Blutooth as VZ disabled this.

I will write off the phone and have my company switch me to Cingular.

What ever happened to the old American value of making the customer happy, oh yeah, they outsourced that one."

i hate to keep bashing motorola, that's not my MO here. i have a lot of friends and family that work there (and they'll be the first ones to tell you how messed up it is there) but the email and comments just keep coming in. amazing.

Is there anything they can do to fix this PR nightmare?

Russ suggests a partnership to develop phones for Apple.

This is an interesting idea, but it's got to be something bigger than another dead end biz dev deal.

Ericsson's phones used to suck too. Their UIs and form factors were among the ugliest in the business...until they spun out the handset design to Sony and created Sony Ericsson - who now IMO, has the best designs in the business (right up there with Nokia).

Would Motorola give up their weakening brand to Apple? I doubt it, but it might be a winning move.

I know the guy that did the Symbian deal at Motorola (which was subsequently dismantled) - perhaps i'll run it by him ;)