Local Insanity

I’ve been away for the last 10 days or so on a well-deserved vacation. Here are a few updates that all have to do with money:

1. The Fed lowered the Prime Rate, and ING Direct lowered their interests rates the next day
2. Helio finally gave me the $272 they owed me (which after 9 months they should owe me $10 interest, but whatever)
3. I now work for wesabe.com, a personal finance website
4. I’m switching to EverBank from ING’s Orange Savings and Wells Fargo’s checking

I’m really excited about the new job, in part because I think it’s a cool company with a good product, but also because I’ll still get to do Rails work with some pretty cool people, like Coda Hale and Andre Arko. Attendio was a good learning experience for me, and I wish them luck in the future, but I think it was time for me to move on and I think I made the right decision.

Number 1 doesn’t bother me so much because of number 4, as EverBank has yet to lower their rates (which stand at 5.01% APY vs. ING’s 4.20% APY for Money Market and 3.65% APY vs. WellsFargo’s 0.00% APY on checking). EverBank also lets you send electronic (or paper) checks, though you can’t write them yourself — you do it online — and you get an ATM card which you can use at BofA, Wells Fargo, and more and they will reimburse you up to $6/mo in fees from other banks, which I estimate to be about two withdraws per month — more than I ever make.

The Helio thing came four days after my last conversation with them (9/17 to 9/21), indicating that perhaps the only way to get your refund back is to be a persistent and bitchy thorn in their side. I’m glad that chapter in my life is closed.

Having recently dealt with Apple in buying the iPhone and having to continually deal with Helio to give me my money back, I thought I’d compare and contrast the experiences I’ve had with them.

Helio hasn’t refunded the money they owe me when I’ve been asking for it for the last nine months. Apple gave me back $100 that they didn’t even owe me, and the refund took about two minutes.

Helio’s customer service representatives are either dumb, misinformed, or powerless to help when confronted with a problem. Apple’s customer service representatives are knowledgeable, intelligent, and generally do the right thing (such as when they completely overhauled my old PowerBook when I sent it in for the final repair).

Helio and Apple both try to appeal to the hip and young crowd, but Helio does it with slogans and cute phrases over the phone, such as “How can we make your day better?” and “If you’re holding [on the phone], you must not be happy.” Apple does it with superior design, superior service, and simplicity.

I spent about an hour on the phone today with Helio, today being about a day later than they said I should have my refund. Since I last blogged about it they pushed it off in August, saying that the approval process should take no more than two weeks from that date, pushed it off again at the end of August, and now pushed it off again in mid-September. Not only that, but they’re now saying 59 business days, not just days. The last person I spoke to said that I could expect the refund 59 business days from today. This is simply amazing. This company has so much contempt for their customers, it is unbelievable. They now tell me that I should wait until December 10th to receive the refund, or over a whole year since I cancelled my account.

While cell phone carriers may suck in general, Helio raises the bar on horrible so much that it’s hard to compete with without going out of business (which I predict Helio will do within a year). Anyone interested in getting a class-action suit together?

Even though they strung me along for nearly six months I was willing to forgive and forget since they were willing to give me a refund; in the last couple weeks I got a voicemail from William who told me that he was seeking authorization from me to put the money back on my credit card, and if not he’d send out a check. I called back to see what was up with that, and I was told by Tuscekia that I would not be receiving a refund because the phone was received late and because it was in poor condition. WTF!? I thought that late phone thing was a dead horse and we’d cleared it out after being told several times that it was not a problem. And what’s this about poor condition - I’d never been told that before.

So I dug a little deeper, and asked for the supervisor, who was Josh. Josh told me that he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. He explained that the Fulfillment Center determines the condition and arrival date of returned merchandise and that it was they who declared it late and in poor condition. He further explained that they do this as soon as the phone arrives, which by my count is December 13 but by their reckoning is March 17. “So”, I asked, “if the phone’s condition was marked in your system since March 17th then why has everyone I’ve talked to since then said nothing about the phone’s condition being an issue and that I should eventually receive a refund?” All he had to say for himself was that he was sorry for the misinformation, but there was nothing he could do. I told him that I returned the phone in perfect condition, and even mentioned that I left the little plastic thing that covered the screen so it wouldn’t get scratched - and of that I have proof. He suggested I follow up with FedEx since, by assuming that both Helio and me are right, FedEx - the only other party involved - must be wrong.

So I asked FedEx.com for the information about the shipment, and was told again that it was received on December 13th. Not only that, but they let me download the proof of delivery in PDF complete with the name and signature of the person who accepted the package! FedEx++, what a refreshingly well-run business compared to Helio. I didn’t even have to talk to anyone or spend more than two minutes and I had all the information I wanted, save for some advice on how to deal with Helio.

What now? Well Josh suggested that I call them back if I got the information from FedEx, so that’s what I’ll do. If they still refuse then I’m just glad that the internet and law suits exist for venting and financial recourse, respectively.

UPDATE: I called back and got Bern, who was helpful and sympathetic. He spoke with a 2nd tier rep, keeping me on hold for the most part. He said that he recognized that I was in the right and that he would work the the other rep to get my refund approved, but that it’d need 3rd tier approval before it’d be signed off on (whatever that means). He then said the words I’ve come to know well: “It’ll take a few weeks to process, not to exceed 59 days.” Yeah, well.. no offense, but we’re at 170 days here, and tacking on yet another 59 days puts it up to 229, or about seven and a half months. Not to mention that a the “not to exceed 59 days” has not meant shit so far, and I somehow doubt it will in the future either.

I don’t doubt that some of the individual customer service reps I’ve spoken to do want to help, but I’m beginning to feel like Helio has a corporate policy of stalling refunds for as long as possible in hopes that the customer will just give up.

Today I called Helio again, probably not for the last time, trying to ascertain whether the information I had (e.g. that they received the device on March 17th and that I should receive a refund no later than May 16th) was correct. The woman I spoke to, Jazel (48706), said that the date they received the device was indeed March 17th, but that no request for a credit had been put in. WTF!?! I HATE you Helio. Do the right thing for once!

She told me that she put in a request to refund $271.99 to my credit card (what do you guys need that 1 cent for?) and that now I’d have to wait yet another 59 days for the refund, which puts the last possible day at June 4th, or 6 months after I canceled my account. This has spurred me to think of a site that helps people get their money back from companies.

I’m going to call back in two weeks — we’ll see if I get a different story.

Zach didn’t call me back. WTF Helio?! I called them back, talked to Jerry (48627) and was told that they received the unit on March 17th!! Okay, now really WTF?! I sent it in December. As usual, they sent me an email asking if I’d like to fill out a survey afterwards. I did, and left this in the freeform comment section:

I’m almost at the point of deciding that Helio won’t voluntarily refund my money - I don’t want to pursue legal action, but I will if I don’t get a refund soon. I’ve been waiting for almost four months and been getting the runaround from customer service.

Oh, and to add insult to injury:

Helio has this policy they call the “30 Day Happiness Guarantee”, which is basically that if you’re not satisfied for whatever reason, you can cancel your service within the first 30 days, paying only the pro-rated service you’ve used. Sounded good, and the Drift had the potential to be a pretty good phone, so I tried it.

After about 11 days I decided that the service wasn’t for me, so I bid them a fond farewell — or so I thought. That was December 12th that I cancelled my account, and in a few days it’ll be 100 days that they were supposed to have sent me a refund. For reference, their official policy is that refunds should take a few weeks, not to exceed 59 days. Well, we’re way past 59 days here, and we’ve also reached the end of my patience.

After calling about five times they created an escalation for my problem and assigned a guy, Zach, to the case — this was about two weeks ago. Zach was friendly and seemed intelligent. He called me back within the 72 hours he said he would, and promised to keep me updated as to the status, and manner, of the refund. I haven’t heard from him since. I called back this morning to figure out what was going on only to be told that they were waiting on the finance department to do its thing and that Zach would call me back within 24-72 hours. Where have I heard that befo… oh yeah! It’s the same fucking thing they told me a few weeks ago!

So if you’re considering trying out a Helio, be sure you do your homework first — it’s a long commitment whether you keep the service or drop it. Does anyone know if there’s some sort of legal requirement for a company to give a refund within a particular timeframe?

As mentioned in my previous post, I decided to give the MNVO Helio a go with its new, sexy Drift phone. In this post I’ll be listing my experiences with it over the last 11 days or so. Some of my comparisons will be made against the Sony Ericsson T616. Know it. Love it.

Call Quality and Reception

I know, weird to start off a phone review with this category, especially for a phone whose company asks you “Don’t call it a phone” and “Don’t call us a phone company”. As it piggybacks on Sprint, you’ll get the same coverage as Sprint. As I write this I’m in 93306, the outskirts of Bakersfield. I have full bars on both phones (Drift on Sprint, T616 on Cingular). Call quality on the Drift seems slightly better than the T616, but this could be simply my imagination.

Google Maps

The killer app on the Drift is Google Maps. In San Francisco the device is accurate to within a few meters, though during my Thanksgiving weekend I had to opportunity to test it in Bakersfield (um, yay?) and found that it would sometimes tell me that I was several miles from where I actually was. This made me wonder - is it actually a GPS or does it triangulate based on cell tower proximity? Despite its placing me at the local raceway when I was in fact at home, I have had good experiences with this app. It helped me find the Bubble Lounge, after all.

No Mac Support

Now to bring it down a notch. Being an avid Mac user, it is important to me that a device be able to talk with my MacBook if it makes sense for it to do so, and a phone certainly falls into this category. Address Book is the master, the source, the benevolent dictator that tells me who I know. He should be able to tell my phone who I know, and to continue to update my phone with the latest news of my social goings-on. Unfortunately I can’t do this with Helio and the Drift (but where there’s a will, there’s a script - post a comment if you want instructions).

In fact, I can’t even pair the thing with my computer due to a mismatch in the number of digits expected for the PIN. I never had a problem with my T616 or my Motorola V551. What’s up with that Samsung? The included USB cable doesn’t appear to do anything when I plug it in to the Mac, so the only way I could even get files onto the thing is to get a MicroSD card reader, a card, and then hook that up to my computer. This is a big thumbs down for me.

Look and Feel

NOTE: The stickers are still on the face and back of the thing, and that’s why the display looks a little funny.

First things first: it is a sexy beast. The device itself feels solid, despite the occasional weirdness of it moving slightly when I’m on the phone due to the slider form-factor. It is a little smaller than my T616, though not by much. It is slightly heavier as well, but when it’s in my pocket I don’t notice the difference. Looking at the picture to the right at a bigger size, you may notice the time on the T616. This is a handy feature, as I don’t wear a watch. The Drift lacks this touch. The soft buttons are of a similar setup on the two, and I like some features of each. Both have a “back” button, but they’re in different places. The Drift’s button is a little too close to the “down” button, leading me to accidentally press it a few times. The two soft buttons on both are easy to hit, but directional buttons in general are easier on the T616 due to its joystick configuration. This is countered by its occasional confusion of pressing the joystick in being taken as some other direction, a problem the Drift does not share. The Drift goes along with convention by having two large buttons: the green and the red, logically used when beginning something (notably calls) and ending something (as well as power).

The number pad on the Drift is revealed by sliding the face up, revealing buttons that are large but with no margin, which in practice I find harder to hit accurately than the smaller keys on the T616. When opened, all the keys on the Drift light up, including the soft keys, which is important due to their lack of margin. The Drift is relatively smart about when to use T9 vs. Multitap, but you have to tell it to use T9 the first time. One major annoyance is typing in the web browser, as there doesn’t seem to be a way to easily type a forward slash. You have to change the input type to Symbol, press down twice, then press 7 twice. Ack.

Also, the charger seems likely to cause less damage to the phone than with my T616 (I had a previous one that eventually stopped charging because the charger had broken the contacts on the phone). The only thing that remains to be seen is whether the flap will insist on sticking out like the RAZR’s is wont to do. As for the actual feel of the Drift, the side buttons make holding it a slightly more uncomfortable experience compared to the T616.

Camera

While this isn’t that important to me, it is a nice thing to have sometimes. I hadn’t used the camera up until this test, and I must say it’s pretty darn good. Be warned though, that this is from someone who’s current camera phone was made several years ago. The picture to the left is from the Drift. It is a somewhat challenging shot because of the intensity of the background light. Yet the drift did okay with it. By contrast, the T616 fell flat on its face, as shown below. However, I had to send the picture to myself from the Drift via MMS to my email, which took a few minutes. On the T616 I just used Bluetooth file transfer, which took about 10 seconds. Two steps forward, one step back.

Drift	T616

Browser

The browser seems like a good idea, but it’s pretty restricted. I could sign into GMail, but not actually see my messages. I couldn’t install the GMail app. As mentioned earlier, typing in URLs manually is a pain. Some sites are suggested for you (like Digg, MySpace, etc), but I find browsing on them reminiscent of a squinting contest. I wouldn’t use this phone if you plan to use the web a lot. As I don’t plan to use the web a lot on it, the jury is still out as to whether this will affect my final decision.

IM

Despite the crappy browser, it is still pretty usable as an IM client. It supports AIM, MSN, and Yahoo!, though Jabber is conspicuously missing. I’ve tried it with AIM and found it usable, but not terribly useful. Who wants to be reachable all the time like that? SMS and calling is enough of a distraction.

Email

Sending just a regular ol’ email seems to be done through the browser at Helio’s webmail site. This is pretty annoying as you must navigate to the site, log in, then send a message. This is not usable, though it could be useful if it were. I already mentioned that GMail is not supported, so look elsewhere for that functionality.

Baked-in Offline Apps

Apps such as the calendar, alarms, contact list etc. feel pretty good compared to the T616 and have more options, such as a recurrent alarm that happens only on weekdays (no more setting the alarm every night!). The ability to have a summary of your Todos and Calendar on the phone’s home screen is nice, though there’s no interactivity (which is probably for the best, as the confusion introduced by that would just be too much). Unfortunately, as mentioned before, there’s no sync here with the Mac. There may be with Windows, but that doesn’t matter to me.

Battery Life

My phone usage is maybe 15 minutes a day talk-time. I also have played around with the Google Maps thing for a few minutes at a time. So far the Drift seems to last about 2-3 days with this usage. This is worse than the T616, which goes about 3-4 days with this usage. The battery indicator on the Drift is also a discrete thing with four bars, whereas the T616 is more granular (and colored too!).

User Interface

The main user interface it pretty easy to get used to, but the Java apps don’t obey the same rules, nor do some of the built-in apps (like the MMS client). This is kinda weird, and stands in strong contrast to the T616 where all the built-in stuff has the same UI (of course the Java apps don’t, but there’s not much call to use them). But damn, isn’t that dialing screen nice?

Summary

The Drift is a nice sexy slider, but the jury is leaning toward canceling the Helio service, mainly because of the lack of Mac support. More on it in 10 days or so, when I’ll discuss the iPhone’s impact on my decision among other things.

Helio is a virtual carrier that piggybacks on Sprint. It appeals to the MySpace crowd, allowing users to access MySpace on the phone. I looked at them a few weeks ago, but decided against it solely on the basis of their lack of a Bluetooth-enabled phone. Sometime in the last week they came out with a new phone, the Drift, which has Bluetooth. Well then, I guess I need to take another look.

I generally like what I see, and here’s what I’ve found:

Pros

• They have good coverage (or so it seems from their coverage checker)
• They offer all-you-can-use data, SMS, MMS, etc starting at $65/mo
• The Drift has a GPS with built-in Google Maps support
• The Drift is attractive
• The company is new (est. June 2006)
• They offer a 30-day guarantee

Cons

• They’re a CDMA network, so the phones cannot be used on other services, and vice-versa
• Their phones are locked down software-wise
• The company is new (est. June 2006)
• Address Book support for Mac OS X involves a workaround

I intend to take full advantage of the 30-day guarantee. I opted for a new number, as I didn’t want to port my number. I figure that it’s about time to recycle my contacts. So here’s to 415!