An HTC DoA: Part 5
Continued from Part 4 (read from the beginning).
I took a trip to the UK at the beginning of the month, and when I returned on the 13th immediately checked my credit card statement. I wasn't surprised to see that the refund still hadn't been processed (now past the 14-business-day cut-off mark for credit card refunds). I called HTC yet again, and after a bit of hold time was given some good-ish news.
The agent confirmed that yes, HTC's warehouse had received my phone and they had accepted it. However, someone at said-warehouse hadn't closed the ticket in their system which prevented the refund from being processed. I was promised that the ticket would once again be escalated and that the escalations team would get the warehouse to close the ticket and things would get moving again.
I asked if HTC would compensate me for the interest accrued on my credit card from having this charge sitting on it for nearly two months, but was told they wouldn't do anything. It was worth asking about, though.
So, on Tuesday the 17th I once again checked my credit card statement and there it was! A line item showing a credit for the DoA Nexus One. Although I wasn't happy with the time it took to deal with the issue, and the interest charges that built up from it, I was ready to put the issue to bed.
And then I got the following email from HTC:
Dear Laslow,
Thank you for using HTC Customer Service. We want to make your next visit even better and would like your feedback. If you haven't already done so please help us improve by taking a quick survey on your experience using HTC Customer Service.
Thank you very much for your time. Be sure to visit us online at http://www.htc.com to read the latest announcements and check out our newly released products.
We are unable to receive replies to this email account. Please visit us at http://www.htc.com if you have any questions or need further assistance.
Sincerely,
HTC
I couldn't pass it up. I filled out the survey and was completely honest about the experience I had with trying to get a refund for a DoA unit and how ridiculous that I had to choose that route in the first place, rather than having the option to simply get a new, non-refurbished replacement like American customers. I submitted it, and then completely forgot about it.
This morning, while I was off rebuilding a borked IPCop box, HTC left me a voice mail message that went something like this:
Good morning Mr. Laslow. My name <redacted> from HTC, and I'm just calling to follow up on your return. I am very, very sorry that it took so long to process your refund. I'm also very sorry that you received a DoA unit in the first place. If you need any further assistance with this, please call us at 866-449-8358. Once again, we appreciate your business and are very sorry about this whole thing.
I was stunned; I never expected to hear back from HTC at all. I'm not, however, surprised by the fact that they simply apologized rather than offering some form of compensation (be it an accessory, a t-shirt, anything really). Regardless, I'm happy that this is over and I can finally end the tale of an HTC DoA.
Wish: Preload Map Data on Maps App for Android
While driving back from the Scottish Highlands to the South of England, I noticed something annoying about the Maps application for Android - when you pick out a route via the 'Directions' feature, all is well and good until you enter an area with no cell reception. At this point, you're screwed.
I know it's impossible to expect Google to preload hundreds of megabytes of map data on to your phone (you know, those pesky storage restrictions and all), but how about this: after Maps provides the directions for your route in text form, and you click 'Show on map', Maps could pop up an option (this could also be a configurable setting) asking if you want to preload map data.
My crappy mock-up of the prompt made on my netbook with a trackpad.
If you choose yes, it downloads the map data from Google's servers for the planned route and caches it to your SD card. If existing map data is present that overlaps, it uses that after checking to make sure it's up-to-date.
Probably a long shot that something like this could ever be implemented, but it would make life for those using their Android device as a Sat Nav so much easier, especially if you're going on a long trip.
An HTC DoA: Part 4
Continued from Part 3.
So the unthinkable has happened - I actually received the shipping label from HTC yesterday! I immediately boxed up the phone and dropped it at a nearby FedEx box, and then proceeded to hammer the F5 key on the FedEx tracking screen.
Also to my surprise was the fact that the shipping label was for Priority Overnight shipping, and that the package reached its destination at 7:45am (PST) this morning! I'll update this post later on when HTC contacts me regarding my refund.
Update (07/16/2010): Still no contact from HTC. However, after re-reading the initial email they sent, it does state:
Once we receive the items we will review the condition and we will contact you by phone or email if we have any further questions. If no additional information is needed a refund should show on your credit card within 14 business days of receipt of the return.
So at this point I'll be sitting back and waiting for my credit card balance to update. I did end up ordering the replacement phone from Google on Tuesday, and it arrived (in working condition, no less!) this morning! Good thing, to, because I hear that this is Google's last batch of N1's that they'll be selling through the web store....
Concluded in Part 5.
An HTC DoA: Part 3
Continued from Part 2.
It's day 5 now and still no shipping label. I called HTC again and got a slightly different answer out of this rep. This one told me that my ticket had *just* been escalated and was on it's way to the warehouse now. When I told him that the other agents had told me it had already gone up to the escalation team, he started backpedaling and said that although the ticket had been escalated it takes them time to look things over.
4 days? Ya, right.
So I asked for a supervisor. After waiting on hold (no music, just silence so you never know if you've been cut off), a 'supervisor' came on the line (supervisor is in quotes as, having working in a call centre before I have first hand experience pretending to be a co-workers supervisor - it's a very common practice). I asked again what was going on, and she had yet another story. Apparently, HTC's shipping system has been 'down' for 'a few days', and they have no ETA on things. She assured me, though, that (for real this time!) my ticket has been escalated, it should be at the attention of the warehouse, and I should have a label by Monday or Tuesday.
So, starting Monday afternoon (as nobody's around to man the phones on weekends), I'll continue with my daily phone campaign trying to find out when I can possibly expect to send back my wife's brick...err...Nexus One.
Continued in Part 4.
An HTC DoA: Part 2
Continued from Part 1.
Day four of the return process and no real progress to report. According to the details given to me by HTC on Monday (see part 1), I should have received a shipping label in my email the following day. When I didn't, I called HTC support back. The agent I spoke with told me to check my spam folder (already done - nothing), and then said that she would 'escalate the ticket' and a label sent out right away. I thanked her, disconnected, and waited.
And waited.
End of day Wednesday rolled around and still no shipping label. I called HTC again and was told that it can take an extra day when things go through the escalation process and that I should expect it to show up in my email no later than Thursday.
Well, here we are on Thursday and still no label.
I called HTC yet again, and was told that yes, I should have received the shipping label today. The agent then proceeded to tell me that he update the ticket, 'increase the priority', and that I should keep waiting.
Really, HTC? I'm normally a pretty patient guy, but come on! I've heard of American customers getting new, replacement phones within days, but we Canadians need to go through this gong show of a return process and then re-purchase the device because otherwise we end up a refurbished phone instead of a new one. This is bad PR, people. It's time to start spreading the news.
Find out what happens next in Part 3.
An HTC DoA: Part 1
When Google first offered the Nexus One in Canada (by making a GSM version for AT&T, which is compatible with Rogers, Telus, and Bell in Canada), I jumped on. I had my order in the day the web store was updated, and in my hands by the end of the same week. Despite the cost, I consider it the best gadget purchase I've ever made.
Fast-forward to last week. With my wifes birthday coming up, I thought it would be nice to surprise her with a trip to the local Telus dealer (her carrier) for a shiny new phone. After looking at their offerings (the only two real considerations were the Motorola Milestone and the HTC Hero), she decided that she'd come down with a case of Phone Envy and wanted a Nexus One as well.
So, no big deal - we ordered the phone and waited. Unfortunately, due to the stat holiday on July 1st, the phone didn't arrive on Friday like expected and instead came in yesterday (the following Monday). I left the phone plugged in to charge, and when the light turned green to say all was well I fired it up.
And waited.
And waited some more.
The Boot Screen on my other, unlocked (and functional) Nexus One
After about five minutes of staring at the above picture (minus the lock on the bottom, as I hadn't gotten around to doing that yet), I got the feeling something was wrong.
I powered off the phone by pulling out the battery, then booted in to HBOOT mode (hold down the VOLUME DOWN key while pressing Power). That worked fine, so I tried to enter recovery. Unfortunately, I was met with the same screen. I tried several more times for both normal mode and recovery without success. Then I gave up and called Google.
At this point, I'd like to point out that I'm fairly certain it's just a software error. Unfortunately, the only way I could really do anything about that would be to Unlock the phone, which voids the warranty. As such, the call to support was warranted.
I called the number listed on the Google Phone Contact Support page (1-888-48-NEXUS) and after a few quick IVR choices I was greeted nearly immediately by a tech. He asked about the problem, what I had tried, and immediately agreed the phone was D0A and would need to be replaced. That's when things started to go downhill.
The problem is that I live in Canada, and HTC has a different policy for international orders than their standard 'send you a replacement and then send the old one back' policy for domestic ones. If you live in Canada and get a DoA phone, you have two options:
- Send it back via their normal repair process and get a refurbished phone (no option for a new one)
- Initiate a 'Buyers Remorse' return, get a refund for the device, and then order a new one.
The choice was fairly obvious - I ordered my wife a new phone, so that's what she was going to get. After gathering a little more information, the Google tech transfered me over to HTC support to process the return order.
As the new tech was going over the specifics, a thought occurred:
Me: Okay, so I do the return, and within 14 business days of you receiving the device and okay'ing everything, you credit the purchase price back, correct?
Tech: Yes, that's correct.
Me: So what about the duty charge that I had to pay CoD?
Tech: Oh, that. Hang on. --Pause-- Okay, I checked on that, and what happens is you'll get some paperwork from us once the refund has been processed. Once you have that paperwork, contact Customs and they'll be able to issue a refund.
So at this point, I may have to wait three weeks for credit from HTC (although apparently it usually doesn't take that long), and then I can file a claim to get my ~$70CAD that I paid for taxes back.
All was said and done, and I prompted received a confirmation email repeating what the agent said. However, as of posting I still haven't received a FedEx shipping label in my email as promised. I called HTC back, and they escalated the ticket and said they'd resend the label, so now I'm waiting on that. Once I've got the label in and the phone sent away, I'll order another N1 and see what happens.
After 5000 Tweets: A Review/HowTo of Twitter
I recently hit the 5,000 tweet mark on Twitter, and figured that it's as good a time as any to write something about my experience on the abbreviated social networking site. It also seems appropriate as I permanently deleted my Facebook account (well, I'm in the process, anyway).
Click 'Continue Reading' below for the wall-of-text review.
From The Search Results: CLI Basics
To the person who found my blog by searching "what command to run on terminal emulator", I'd probably suggest the following:
help
Rogers Wireless Hijacks Wildcard DNS Records
Although I can't confirm when this happened (it may have happened a while ago and I just never noticed), I was browsing the internet last night on my Google Nexus One and noticed that, when I mistyped http://imdb.com, I was redirected to http://www20.search.rogers.com (which doesn't work outside of Rogers' network) instead of receiving a normal Not Found error. This all smacks of the infamous VeriSign Site Finder fiasco.
I'm no fan of browser redirects in any form, and I'm even less of a fan of Yahoo which Rogers partners with to, among other things, provide results on their hijacked landing page. But what can you do? It's their service, and there's no opt-out link on the page.
Well, the answer is to manually opt-out. Unfortunately, you need to have a rooted/jail-broken phone to do this. As stated above, I have a Google Nexus One which runs CyanogenMod, but this should work with any other rooted Android phone and even jail-broken iPhones (although the paths are different -- you'll need to alter them as applicable).
To manually opt-out, do the following (assumes Android phone):
- Open a shell on your phone. You can use ConnectBot, Terminal Emulator, or adb shell.
- Assume root (su command).
- Remount the system partition in to read/write mode -- mount -o rw,remount /system
- Browse to /system/etc.
- Use your favourite text editor to open hosts.
- Add the following to the bottom of the hosts file -- 127.0.0.1 www20.search.rogers.com
- Save and quit!
You're done! You've just manually opt'ed-out of Rogers Wildcard DNS hijack. Now you'll just get the normal 'Not Found' errors, as when Rogers see that the domain you've entered doesn't exist and tried to redirect you to their search page, your phone will point that domain to itself and fail as it isn't running a webserver.
TL;DR Version: To prevent getting directed to Rogers' Search Page when you mistype an address, edit your hosts file to point www20.search.rogers.com to the 127.0.0.1 loopback address.
Froyo: First Impressions
It's Froyo!
IMPORTANT NOTE: It's been pointed out that the Froyo ROM floating around is nothing more than a Release Candidate. Although that means that it's technically feature complete, it's still little more than a beta. Expect bugs, expect brokenness, and don't expect any help with it.
I've been using the pre-rooted Froyo update (Android 2.2) for a few hours now, and here are my first impressions:
- Speed: Holy crap is this fast! In fact, it's even faster than some of the ROMs running over-clocked kernels. It takes about the same amount of time to boot, but the phone is very responsive as soon as the lock screen appears, and I haven't encountered any lag throughout the system.
- App Restore: I had no idea this feature was in Froyo, but imagine my surprise when I booted up Froyo after a full wipe only to have it immediately restore all of my installed apps! Talk about a time saver!
- Bookmarks: Even though I was missing a few, most of my bookmarks in Browser were automatically synced. This alone almost makes the Froyo update worth while.
- Exchange Sync: Everything works exactly as before, only now it syncs with my Exchange calendar out-of-box quickly and painlessly. No more need for CorpCAL.apk!
- Froyo-Only Apps: One of the first apps out for Froyo is ChromeToPhone -- it lets you send links from Chrome on your desktop/laptop computer directly to your Android device. Gone are the days of using URL shorteners or QR codes to get something on your phone - instead, simply browse to the site you want on your computer, then click a button in the toolbar. You're Android device will near-instantly receive the link and notify you.
- Bugs: Yes, there are a few. The main one I've run in to is trying to turn off USB Storage. If you attempt to turn it off on the phone before 'Safely Removing' the device in Windows, Android becomes generally unresponsive and eventually reboots. While annoying, I'm not really that surprised, as I did it wrong. Also, Terminal Emulator crashes in Froyo due to a compatibility issue with the stock ROM. This will hopefully be addressed in a future update, but for the time being, use ConnectBot.
I can't wait for the eventual CyanogenMod 6.x based on Froyo, but that won't be out for a while, as Google has yet to release the source code for 2.2. Things are definitely looking good for Android, though!
UPDATE: The HTC_IME (virtual keyboard) has been updated for Froyo. Get it on XDA.
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