[Fwd: Verizon v710 Settlement]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Verizon V710 Settlement
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 10:46:41 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Organization: TELECOM Digest
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom

http://www.kirtlandpackard.com/v710/

Class Action Against Verizon for the Motorola v710 Cell Phone

A national settlement has been reached in the claims against Verizon
Wireless over the Motorola V710 cell phone. Details will be available
shortly at http://www.verizonwireless.com/V710Settlement


--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
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Steve Sobol wrote:
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Verizon V710 Settlement
> Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 10:46:41 -0400
> From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
> Organization: TELECOM Digest
> Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
>
> http://www.kirtlandpackard.com/v710/
>
> Class Action Against Verizon for the Motorola v710 Cell Phone
>
> A national settlement has been reached in the claims against Verizon
> Wireless over the Motorola V710 cell phone. Details will be available
> shortly at http://www.verizonwireless.com/V710Settlement
>
>

Let me guess, Kirt and packard has agreed to accept $12.6 million for
their "exhaustive work" in the case and each member of the class will
get a coupon for a $5.00 service credit...

George wrote:

> Let me guess, Kirt and packard has agreed to accept $12.6 million for
> their "exhaustive work" in the case and each member of the class will
> get a coupon for a $5.00 service credit...

Probably.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

Steve Sobol wrote:
> George wrote:
>
>> Let me guess, Kirt and packard has agreed to accept $12.6 million for
>> their "exhaustive work" in the case and each member of the class will
>> get a coupon for a $5.00 service credit...
>
>
> Probably.

Could be worse. In the class action against Sprint and Lockline
insurance, persons in the class got a $10 pre-paid long distance card,
with LD charged at the oh-so-low rate of $.50 per minute. So, 20
minutes of free domestic long distance. When you already have a cell
phone that includes free LD as part of your plan. IIRC, the law firm
pocketed around $15 mil.

Upon hearing about the "settlement," I excluded myself from the class
out of principle.

By the way, the link at the law firm's website in the first post points
to another link on the vzw website, which is broken.


--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote in
news:dfv22n$qep$1@ratbert.glorb.com:

> http://www.verizonwireless.com/V710Settlement

The page you are trying to reach is temporarily unavailable or the page may
no longer exist.

Short agreement...(c;

--
Larry

Isaiah Beard <sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com> wrote in
news:11i6amj1dv0uh8d@corp.supernews.com:

> vzw website, which is broken.

How convenient for the PR department doing damage control....(c;

--
Larry

Larry wrote:
> Steve Sobol <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote in
> news:dfv22n$qep$1@ratbert.glorb.com:
>
>
>>http://www.verizonwireless.com/V710Settlement
>
>
> The page you are trying to reach is temporarily unavailable or the page may
> no longer exist.
>
> Short agreement...(c;

Heh. Probably hasn't been posted yet.



--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

--
Stephen P. Reimers
Naval Salvage Officer
BMW Motorcycle Rider
"Steve Sobol" <sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote in message
news:dfv22n$qep$1@ratbert.glorb.com...
>
> Class Action Against Verizon for the Motorola v710 Cell Phone
>
> A national settlement has been reached in the claims against Verizon
> Wireless over the Motorola V710 cell phone. Details will be available
> shortly at http://www.verizonwireless.com/V710Settlement
>
Steve, pls refresh my ailing memory - what were the gist of the claims
against Verizon for the Motorola V710? I have one- it works pretty good - no
real issues with it as long as you have a good signal, the battery lasts
adequately..... Whats the flap over?
r/
Steve

12-Sep-2005, From Ellery Davies < Ellery (at) StarBus (dot) com >

Hello Joel,

The "claim" is that Verizon failed to adequately distinguish (or warn)
consumers that the model V710 it is advertising and selling is not the model
V710 that Motorola designed. Instead, despite claims on the box and in some
advertising literature, it has much of the Bluetooth and connector
functionality intentionally disabled at the firmware level. Although Verizon
claims that they did this for security reasons, it means that users cannot
send and receive ringtones, music and photos to and from their own
computers. Of course, you could do all of those things if you want to pay a
quarter for each photo or purchase an optional services packages. Jonathan
Zdziarski, author of Dspam (*), led the fight along with some disgruntled
V710 users in California. Incidentally, Jonathan has just taken a job with
CipherTrust, an anti-spam company.

Many feel that Verizon would have easily squashed the class action, if they
had not so blatantly lied about the reason for their actions, or if they had
not disguised the phone as a pure-blood v710. By using that model number
without explicitly making the modifications known to consumers, a reasonable
person might logically feel it implies a feature set that is advertised and
promoted by the manufacturer. This is especially true when the phone was
introduced for use with just one carrier.

NOTES:
1. I have tried so hard in the preceding two paragraphs to be impartial and
to simply state the facts. I am sorry if I got carried away with my feelings
on the issue carried me over the edge of political indifference!

2. Dspam is a Bayesian filter used to identify and block spam. It's not a
bad idea, but as with any filter, legitimate messages are sometimes caught.
Unfortunately, if even a very small number of desirable messages are trapped
in a spam folder, it is as bad as no filter at all, because the recipient
must constantly comb through the spam folder for fear of losing an important
message.

Q. What to do?! How about Sender ID?

A. Wow! We're getting pretty far from the topic here (about the V710 class
action). But I will take a stab at it...

Identifying a sender only helps if a recipient has a prior relationship with
the sender. If I tell you that my message is from Joe Fitzpatrick and I
slide my passport and urine sample under the door, this information does
nothing to assure you of the relevance of the message content. Identifying
strangers may create traceable paths back to the most egregious (and
illegal) scam artists, but no one wants to really spend their time chasing
down foreign scammers. The problem of spam is one of information overload.
It's not that your message is illegal that really matters, often it is not.
The problem is that your message is poorly targeted. It does not appeal to
my personal interests and my level of personal frustration with intrusion
which I may find harassing.

Filters are PART of the solution, but helping senders to legitimize their
traffic is the complimentary component that has been missing from much of
the debate. Sender ID and registries of past behavior are poor attempts to
guarantee the legitimate and PERSONALLY DESIRABLE nature of unsolicited
contact. So what is the answer?

It's really pretty easy... If you want a guarantee, then look for
unrecognized senders to guarantee the content of their message with cash -
direct to you! Of course, you may not get all senders to bond their messages
overnight, but some senders who are very confident in their mailing lists
are already choosing to voluntarily bond their mail with cash. Who are they
and how much cash are they offering. The only way to know is to insist that
your ISP let through bonded mail if it meets your minimum cash requirement.

Q. Who is offering message bonds?

A consortium of developers from various companies and academia are defining
the spec, interoperability standards, and certification requirements. Their
web site is www.accountabilityinitiative.org (it appears that
www.senderatrisk.org also works). The only company implementing end-to-end
message bonds today is Vanquish Labs (www.vanquish.com), although IronPort
Systems has a weak version that involves intermediaries and does not result
in the recipient making the decision or keeping the money.

So what's the status of the class action?

-Quick

Ellery Davies wrote:
> 12-Sep-2005, From Ellery Davies < Ellery (at) StarBus
> (dot) com >
>
> Hello Joel,
>
> The "claim" is that Verizon failed to adequately
> distinguish (or warn) consumers that the model V710 it is
> advertising and selling is not the model V710 that
> Motorola designed. Instead, despite claims on the box and
> in some advertising literature, it has much of the
> Bluetooth and connector functionality intentionally
> disabled at the firmware level. Although Verizon claims
> that they did this for security reasons, it means that
> users cannot send and receive ringtones, music and photos
> to and from their own computers. Of course, you could do
> all of those things if you want to pay a quarter for each
> photo or purchase an optional services packages. Jonathan
> Zdziarski, author of Dspam (*), led the fight along with
> some disgruntled V710 users in California. Incidentally,
> Jonathan has just taken a job with CipherTrust, an
> anti-spam company.
>
> Many feel that Verizon would have easily squashed the
> class action, if they had not so blatantly lied about the
> reason for their actions, or if they had not disguised
> the phone as a pure-blood v710. By using that model
> number without explicitly making the modifications known
> to consumers, a reasonable person might logically feel it
> implies a feature set that is advertised and promoted by
> the manufacturer. This is especially true when the phone
> was introduced for use with just one carrier.

Are you asking me? I don't know, but the person who started this thread
seems to believe that Verizon has announced (or is about to announce) the
details at a link in that posting


"Quick" <quick7135-news@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote in message
news:GpGVe.371$Ob2.74@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
> So what's the status of the class action?

Ellery Davies wrote:
> Are you asking me? I don't know, but the person who started this thread
> seems to believe that Verizon has announced (or is about to announce) the
> details at a link in that posting

I pointed to a link on the website of the law firm that argued the case on
behalf of the class, that had a link to Verizon's website, but there's no
page at the address they cited yet. Or at least there wasn't, a few days
ago. Might be now. Check Google Groups...


--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307