Dosboy's Bits and Bytes

Finally back to Toronto, and on Tuesday (first business day back) I get a call from a Telus rep which went something like this:

Telus Rep: Hello. I’m calling to make sure you received the notification about Amp’d and to let you know that Telus will pick up your contract.

Me: Hmm... so what are my options here?

TR: Telus will pick up your contract and give you a new Telus phone since the Amp’d phone you have will cease to function in a week. Since you have the Q we will offer you any PDA phone or $300 credit towards another phone.

Me: What if I don’t want Telus to pick up my contract?

TR: {head jolts violently to one side, centers, jolts violently again}... Not 6! I said 7! 7’s the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 doors. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.

Me: Why?

TR: 'Cause you're fuckin' fired!

Ok, maybe that’s not exactly how it went, but basically the Telus rep could not offer me anything other than a Telus contract. I told him thanks for the info and that I’d call him back. The following day I called *611 and talked to customer service. This guy fed me the same info about Telus taking over my contract, but then I told him I didn’t want to stay with Telus. He asked if anyone I knew would be interested in taking over my contract and waiving the activation fee. I told him it’s possible, but that either way I want out of my contract. That’s when he told me that if I got someone else to pick it up I could avoid paying a cancellation fee.

Whoa! Back up a minute. This is when I laid into him a bit, telling that unless I’m mistaken, nowhere in my Amp’d contract does it say that should they go under Telus will assume control of my contract. I told him that if I want out of my contract at this point I should not be obligated to Telus for anything, especially a cancellation fee. And you know what? He agreed. And told me that I could get out of my contract if I want. And that he made a note of it in my account so that I don’t have any issues with it when I call back (which I actually believe, unlike when Rogers tells me that but they’ve really just logged a :P emoticon). Then he started offering me better service plan rates than advertised on the site to try to retain me as a customer.

This irks me. Sure, in the end, I get a good deal and walk away happy... but what about the less confrontational people who just blindly accept what they’re told at first? Every single Amp’d customer should be offered a break of contract OR a super deal. Offering me a free phone when I already received one as part of my contract is not a bonus, especially since it involves me returning the one I’ve already received (since it will no longer function in a week or so).

This ends the Amp’d saga. Amp’d, it was fun while it lasted, but in the end I’m happy to be done with you. At least with Rogers I know what to expect. And on that note, I will likely be moving my service back to Rogers. Mostly cuz I can’t deal with being tied down to carrier-branded phones. I want the flexibility that GSM offers. And what will be my next phone you might ask? Well, for the next month or two it’ll be a big-ass crappy old Blackberry. But upon it’s release the Kaiser will be mine! Ooo baby!

I just realized that I haven't provided any updates on the Amp'd situation since I was considering jumping on board. Well, suffice it to say that I did. Overall the service was alright. Voice was mediocre compared to Rogers (specifically elevators and underground areas). Data was fast. The Q was really fast compared to the Dash. Note that all of this is past tense. This is because I got an email yesterday at 4:32pm which read as follows:

Dear Customer,

The Amp’d Mobile Store at 355 King Street West will be closing its doors on Monday, July 30, 2007.

Your Amp'd Mobile phone service will remain uninterrupted. If you have any technical issues, account inquiries or wish to speak to someone about your Amp'd Mobile handset or service, please call *611 on your Amp’d Mobile phone (it’s a free call) or call 1-877-611-AMPD (2673) to speak to a Client Care representative.

Your Amp'd Mobile handset continues to be covered by a 1-year manufacter's warranty. For assistance, please call *611 on your Amp’d Mobile phone (it’s a free call) or call 1-877-611-AMPD (2673) to speak to a Client Care representative.

If you have purchased an Extended Protection Pack, extended warranty service can be obtained by contacting Waves Wireless Communications Ltd.. They can be reached at 1-866-541-9924. For further details, please refer to your copy of the extended warranty contract.

Once again we appreciate your business and apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
The Amp’d Mobile Team

It's extremely suspect that this mail went out at 4:32 on the day in which the email indicates that the store is closing (which it probably did at 5pm). Note also that their King Street store is the only storefront for Amp'd in all of Canada. Which means, that even though they assured me that Amp'd US bankruptcy would not affect them, they lied. In fact, it would seem that there's a lot of lying that's been going on. Let's list all of the lies, shall we:


1. Amp'd Canada is independent of Amp'd US, and the issues that Amp'd US is having will not affect Canada.

This is obviously a big fat lie, as is indicated by the closing of their only store on the same day that Amp'd US suspended service.


2. Tethering via USB or Bluetooth is supported.

This is a huge one. They told me repeatedly before I signed on that I would be able to use my phone as a modem and rock EV-DO speeds on my laptop when there's no WiFi around. Lies. I never got this to work. I called support and spoke with a very knowledgeable person at one point who told me that this was not possible and sent me an email to confirm with contents copied from an internal support document. And I quote,

"Differences with TELUS Motorola Q:
Tethered Connection is NOT available for the Amp'd device i.e. users cannot use the device as a modem."

I forwarded this email to my "contacts" at Amp'd, and they assured me that they had escalated internally and were doing everything they could to come to a resolution. However it is now obvious that since they were on the verge of closing up shop I was at the bottom of (if even on) their list of priorities.

(As an aside, I'd like to point out that I feel this entire post is a waste of time since the company no longer exists, but I also feel like this needs to be documented for the annals of history, and because I'm pissed.)


3. MMS is supported.

Obvious lies, especially when my friend sent me some MMS pictures. Following is the email I sent to Amp'd on the heels of this (since I'm too lazy to paraphrase it):

So I finally got ahold of Amp’d support today, and they told me that “pda phones don’t support MMS”. Now, this is obviously a restriction of Telus as can be seen here:

http://www.everythingq.com/forum/international/telus-mobility-carry-moto-q-82.html#post12717

In fact, if you go to http://direct.motorola.com/hellomoto/q/ and select Canada then look at specs, no MMS. If you select US at the same page and look at specs, MMS. Now, I’m fine not having traditional MMS, but I’d still like a way to send a picture message to a friend’s cell phone, even if it’s via an email gateway of some sort. Does Amp’d/Telus offer such a thing? Secondly, the webpage that you need to visit to see picture messages sent to you is problematic for 2 reasons:

1. The sms that gets sent points to telusmobility.com/snap, which the Amp’d support guy told me is wrong. It should just be ampd.ca and your regular login. This informational message should really be fixed.
2. The ampd.ca website is not only useless on the Q (i.e. it’s not designed for a mobile browser, nor does it redirect to a mobile-friendly site), but when you log in it actually crashes Pocket IE. So basically if a friend sends a phone-to-phone picture message, I have to go to a PC to view it. And because I can’t tether my Q it means I also have to find a wired/wifi internet connection. Doesn’t this defeat the whole purpose of picture messaging?

This was never resolved, however they did say that they were "going to forward your message to a couple of the more technical guys upstairs and get a response and then we can go through proper channels of escalation." Nothing came of this, save for a few back and forth emails which led nowhere.


4. Free SlingPlayer Mobile client with contract.

Big. Fat. Lie. They gave me a coupon code which was supposed to let me obtain a free SlingPlayer Mobile client (retails for about $35 CAD). The first time I tried this code it reduced the cost by $4.50. So "free" became $30.50. I emailed them about this, and a week or so later got a new code. This new code discounted the price by $5.25. More emails. About a week after this, Sling was having a promo where they were giving away the mobile client. Nicely, Amp'd told me this and recommended that I download the client using this promo as opposed to waiting for them to sort out the coupon code issue. Well played, Amp'd... well played.


So, that's the end. The end of my complaints, and the end of Amp'd Canada it seems. I've sent one last email to my contacts there to see if they can provide some insight into what's going on, but I don't really expect a response, nor do I expect them to offer anything valuable even if they do. I expect that they're waiting in line to collect pogey as I write this. I'm currently out of the country but am going to follow up with *611 and Telus when I return to see wtf is going on and try really hard to get out of my contract. If the Amp'd services (like their TV and Radio channels) have vanished, this shouldn't be too hard. And with all of the shit I've been wading through over the last month I expect I'll at least have one leg to stand on. Two might be pushing it though, given the CCCC and their underhanded means.

I did it. I dropped Rogers (for cell service anyway) and picked up Amp'd. And so far I'm pretty damn impressed. I don't really feel like going into a lot of detail right now, but suffice it to say that the speed rocks. The Q is decent (though pretty pitiful battery life - will probably get an extended). The Amp'd channels are novel. Number transfer was painless. But the best part is that Orb looks great and runs smooth at 320kbps. The detected speed in my test was 599kbps, but with that bitrate it would buffer for a second or two every couple of mins. 320kbps was bufferless.

Now, if their unlimited data claim is true, I'll be one happy camper.

Oh, and I got a Slingbox outta the deal too, but haven't even bothered looking at the box yet, let alone opening it up. Maybe this weekend. It's been a long, mentally exhausting week.

I'd read a few things about it being superior to the standard Q, and I don't believe they were lies. I've just been playing with it a bit. The standard WM5 apps have, in general, been slightly improved.

• Instead of File Explorer there's a File Manager app with Search capabilities
  
• There's a Media Center app which indexes all Images, Video or Audio on your device
  
• They added a Voice Recognition app (similar to what's included with WM6)
• They added a Memory Manager so you can actually see memory usage

I also tested OBEX (pushed a CAB file to the device) and installing unsigned apps (installed that CAB file - TCPMP for anyone interested).

In addition, the Q's keyboard is far superior to the Dash. The key separation is much greater which means less likelihood of fat finger multi-button pushing.

I'm not sure if this is just my love of new (to me) tech or if I'm really liking Amp'd as much as I think I do, but I think I do. And I think it'll be fun to rock the Rogers boat a bit. Ok, so really I'm like a piece of dirt on Ted Rogers' shoe in the eyes of Rogers Co. (Mike - I need a boat analogy here) but I'll get personal satisfaction out of it.

So I spent a fair bit of time this afternoon at the Amp'd store. I had a list of questions for them, specifically:

Q. Can you write the unlimited data / max overage charge into the contract?
A. No. Their reasoning is that Telus will not allow them to publish nor log the max overage charge anywhere for fear of getting kicked out of the CCCC... the Canadian Cell Carrier Cartel (I made that up). But I did have multiple managers give me their cards and their "personal" guarantee that either a) it would not change, or b) if it does that they would let me back out of my contract. A personal guarantee is nowhere near a professional one, cuz really what's stopping them from saying "Garth who? I never spoke with you. You must have me confused with someone that cares." if/when I need to call them on it. But, as they pointed out to me, none of the other 3 cartel members would even give me personal guarantees, which is true.

Q. What is the EVDO upgrade path / timeframe?
A. There is not solid date set for an upgrade to EV-DO Rev. A. They did say that it should be live by fall though. And that it supposedly only requires a software upgrade. Now, these guys are definitely not propeller-head phone geeks, but they do at least seem well informed.

Q. Is the Q crippled in any way? (i.e. absent bluetooth profiles, restriction on using as modem, etc.)
A. No. Again, I'm somewhat skeptical of this as these guys aren't propeller-heads. But after spending some time with the Q in the shop today everything SEEMED intact. However I'd really like to install some software to test. Good thing they loaned me a Q on consignment so that I could do some signal strength testing relative to my Rogers phone. I might just have to install an unsigned app or two and see how it goes.

Q. Windows Mobile version on the Q? (I already knew the answer but asked it anyway)
A. Windows Mobile 5.

Q. WinMo upgrade path on the existing Q (knew the answer to this as well thanks to google)?
A. They said that they'd provide upgrades as available. The problem though is that Motorola isn't providing upgrades (or doesn't seem to be from last night's googling), so if Motorola doesn't do it, none of their carriers can.

Q. New phone availability / discounted hardware upgrades?
A. Same as any carrier - based on customer loyalty and duration.

Q. Talk and data at the same time? (being new to CDMA and EV-DO I wasn't sure if this was possible)
A. No. However the cutover is pretty graceful. I was getting a streaming video demo when a call came in. Hit the Ignore button and it flipped back to the video, rebuffered and started playing. Not bad.

Q. Option to back out of the contract within a period of 10-15 days?
A. No. For this reason I was able to convince them to loan me a Q for a couple of days so that I could test signal strength. Don't think this is really gonna tell me anything (the Q isn't active, so I can't make calls on it, but at least I get a visual comparison).

Q. Can I extend this offer beyond Sunday?
A. Depends on Slingbox availability. I was actually asking more about the unlimited data aspect, and that they said is good forever. So that's a plus I suppose, but the lack of documentation around this is still disconcerting.

The other thing I did while there was try to get the Q working as a tethered or Bluetooth modem. Tethering and enabling the Modem applet caused Vista to try to install drivers, which it didn't have. And since I was trying to use this to go online I obviously didn't have an internet connection with which to d/l the drivers that Vista was requesting. Catch-22. So, instead, I gave up on the tethering bit. The Bluetooth side of things seemed to be going along well until Windows told me it needed a username, password and dial string. With a little googling (using my Dash as a modem) I was able to determine that the dial string was #777. The username and password escaped me though. The sales guy called Telus support to get the information, and after talking to a number of unknowledgeable people finally got someone that knew what he was doing... but he still didn't have the right info. So, here's what DOESN'T work:

[phonenumber]@telusmobility.com
[phonenumber]@mb.telusmobility.com
[phonenumber]@ampd.telusmobility.com
[phonenumber]@1x.telusmobility.com
[phonenumber]@pcs.telusmobility.com

They were pretty adamant that the password was the phone's ESN, so that remained static. Now, I admit that Amp'd is relatively new, and that these guys deal with Telus' network and support so they're not all that technical, but the fact that we spent quite some time on the phone and trying to get this working, to no avail, worries me. And is another reason why I wanted the 10-15 day backout period. Who knows what I'm going to encounter only to find that no one in the organization knows how to do it?

Overall, I like the guys in the store. I like the personal approach (I don't think Amp'd has more than a few dozen employees, but I could be wrong). I like unlimited data. I like the Q. I like a free Slingbox. I like Playboy TV Mobile (which is one of the channels included with the plan).

I don't like a verbal agreement regarding unlimited data and nothing written down. I don't like the lack of technical know-how. I don't like the fact that I have to use their phone (stupid CDMA and it's lack of SIM cards).

The WM5 vs. WM6 thing doesn't really bother me. To be honest, WM6 hasn't given me anything that WM5 didn't, other than that stupid 0x85020006 error (which has been recurring in the last day or two, and which seems to be totally random) and what seems to be a worse media player (movie playback stutters much more than it did on WM5 unless I use a really low bitrate).

Odds are good that I'm going to jump on board, but I don't feel great about it, only good. I suppose time will tell, and to be honest it will cost me less than with Rogers anyway. But at least with Rogers I know where I stand. Isn't there some saying about the evil you know being better than the evil you don't?

Will wonders never cease. I wrote that last post, then today I was hanging out having a smoke and I saw an Amp'd Mobile poster. Normally I wouldn't think much of it, but what caught my eye was the mention of a Slingbox. So I read further... seems they're giving a free Slingbox and a Moto Q with a contract. So I got curious... they claim in the poster that you can stream all kinds of shit including TV from your own Slingbox, obviously bypassing their "channels" (of which they have 21 or so - kinda cool, but nothing that would make me a convert). I phone the # on the poster and started asking questions.

• Contract duration is 3 years
• Yes you get the Q
• Yes you get the Slingbox
• 250 mins, unlimited incoming, unlimited evenings/weekends
• blah blah blah

Standard shit. So I asked "Well, how do you handle data? What's the cap? If I'm streaming all this goodness it's gonna chew through data faster than a fat kid through a pie" (ok, I didn't really say that last bit, but I should've). And do you know what he told me? He told me that it's $3/mb for overages, above and beyond 250mb. BUT.... the max overage charge is $24. I paused, caught my breath, then started grilling him. Every answer he gave seemed legit. So what does this mean? It means $149/month for UNLIMITED DATA!!!! The holy grail!

Now, this seems too good to be true, given that I live in the Great White North and our cell market is less competitive than Rwanda. So I went into the Amp'd store. Talked to someone else, but he was also quite knowledgeable. What it comes down to is that this offer is only good until Sunday, and that it's only available through the downtown Toronto Amp'd Mobile store. Further investigation revealed that they do not include this "maximum overage charge" in your contract. The first two bits don't bother me, but this last bit is concerning somewhat. However, I'm still pretty pumped about this. I am going to go back tomorrow and have another conversation, and push VERY hard to get this written into the contract. If they bite, I'm sold. Did some rough calculations against Rogers, and it'll end up being cheaper AND give me unlimited data. And a Moto Q and a Slingbox. All in all a pretty damn good deal.

If anyone outside of the GTA is interested in this and reads this before Sunday, feel free to give me your email address in the comments and I'll provide whatever details (including phone #s and contact names) I can. Note that Amp'd in the US is not related to Amp'd in Canada except by name, so there's no bankruptcy stuff going on up here.