I think that the emotions are high and opinions are at extreme ends of the argument. It doesn't excuse people being rude however.

It's pretty sad that Verizon doesn't care about trying to keep me for the two year contract period. With the rate plans I was at this represents Verizon giving up about $2,400 in revenue.

I wonder what the investors would think if many people did the same.

$2400 to Verizon Wireless is about the same value as the large clump of lint I just pulled from the left pocket of my jeans.
I'm sure you'll enjoy your Sprint 8830, and you won't have to give VZW another thought.

So would they care if 100 people did the same? Would $240,000 mean any thing to them?

What if 1,000 people switched away? Would $2.4M mean anything to them?

drop in the perverbial bucket hate to say it but they wont miss you at all.

Which is at the core of why I am leaving.

Anything is possible but doesn't *appear* to be the case.

After reading brittonx comments above and getting a flyer in this months VZ bill to try VZ Navigator I called them to inquire about if and when the sGPS and/or aGPS would be activated on my 8830. The guy first told me about how GPS worked with the 911 locator and I told him that that had nothing to do with my question. He then said some incorrect things about the 8830 and I said that I was an electrical engineer and had researched what was actually in the 8830 and that the question was not a RIM issue but rather one with VZ. I then said that the Sprint version and Bell Canada version had working sGPS with CDMA and there was no physical/hardware reason that the VZ version should not work. He then said he needed to talk to a supervisor and asked if he could call me back. I said ok and we hung up. About 20 minutes later he called, said that VZ was no longer giving out any details about activation of the GPS on the 8830. I thanked him and hung up.

First time I did not hear "in about two weeks". Interesting.

Being an IT proffesional who has numerous years in the IT and Telco industries I purchased a Blackberry 8830 Knowing the exact schematics of this device and that BB OS and RIM fully support GPS on this phone. After several hours being handed from one verizon rep to another then RIM then a RIM Manager then RIM Middle corporate relations manager then finally conferenced in with some one in Mid to Upper Level management from Verizon while the RIM Management person was on the line as well both authorized to speak on their companies behalf legally stated as follows: Verizonmgr: "Yes our Network Supports all of the GPS functions Present IN the BlackBerry 8830.' RIM Managr: " Yes the 8830 has built in GPS but Verizon has that function disabled in the firmware." Verizonmgr: "At this time our company has no plans to support the built in internal gps on this phone." ME: "But your website and RIMS advertise this as a supported feature. " Verizon mgr" We appologize for any inconvienience this may have caused you. But while the phone supports this function we have no plans to support or permit its functionality on our network at this time. Any more questions?" Me: "No, thank you for your time." RIM Mgr waits till Verizon mgr disconnects: " Mr Harris we appologize for this inconvience." Me:" not a problem thank you for your time as well have a good evening."

I have the names and direct lines to both of these individuals. This is Verizon's official statment as well as RIMs . GPS IS on the Phone but Verizon will not and has no plans to support it / enable it on any 8830 device on their network.

And because some fool trial lawyer has probably already inquired, Verizon corporate has a script from which to answer these questions, and they won't be budged.

This sounds in line with my current understanding based on my calls with Verizon.

So....

If you have an 8830 and want built-in GPS capability. Switch to a different carrier. Vote with your dollars.

If you are thinking of purchasing an 8830 and want GPS capability built in, choose a different carrier. Vote with your dollars.

I am willing to bet there is going to be a class action suit for this. After reading the much entertaining other thread about the "proof" I want to say I want it enabled and will sue everyone.. even myself.. (sarcasm) Not sure why people on this forum seem so uptight.

Great reads, brittonx.. have fun on the other network, you'll be back when you realize your GPS is the only thing that gets good reception muahaha.

I for one, love my damn blackberry. I never ever thought I would like it half as much as I did because I have heard so much about "crackberries" thinking bah I will never be so addicted to a darn phone. I probably get about 200 emails a day now with google chat and nothing tops the chess (FREE) game that you can play against anyone in the world I really don't care too much about GPS as both my cars have them, but it would be nice to have so I really don't mind the complainers and the class action band wagon jumpers.

brittonx keep us updated if you would if you hear anything from VZW

with that being said why dont the mods just close this and let it die and it can be reopened when the sue happy folks try and do their thing

lol Dawg, I know you enjoy this as much as the rest of the people that claim they don't like these threads

I hope you didn't take me serious on the suing portion of my previous post.(if you did I will have to sue you..)

nah these threads are getting Old no one has anything new to add. We all know the out come and in the end does it really matter.

Yes.. It does matter. Many people come here (most probably just lurk) looking for information about what people like and dislike about their phones.

When simply studying the spec sheets of the various phones/providers it is easy to make a mistake (e.g. thinking that the 8830 comes with GPS because 2 of the 3 major providers list it in the specs; the third does not state anywhere that they have crippled it and are selling an inferior product, it is simply not mentioned).

Had it not been for the forums; I might have made a mistake and gone with VZW. I thank this board for making it clear that VZW goes out of their way to provide an inferior phone.

So, yes -- if the forums are to serve as a useful resource, this topic should be discussed. People will not discover the issue if they have to go back to 3 week old threads.

And now that VZW is vehemently denying that they have any plans to put VZN on the 8830 -- the move to cripple the 8830 makes absolutely no sense at all. I could understand the move (though it still annoys me) if they did it to lock people into VZN thus increasing their revenue; but crippling it with no plan to enable it whatsoever -- that is just stupid. Who would want to do business with a company like that?

You're right. I just felt that Dawg had been rude and condescending to other members, and that got me all riled up, but my response was no better. Apologies all round - especially to those poor people like I initially was who just wanted to get the scoop on VZW + GPS.

Actually, after reviewing the posts, I'd like to retract my apology (except to those who are innocent information-seekers). As I said, I initially started as one of those people who are just seeking the facts, and I have NEVER engaged in any kind of rude discussion on a forum before. But it's comments like these that follow from Dawg that have made this thread unreadable:

So mods, it's ok to warn the new guy, but not an established member who should know better? How is that going to keep the forums clean? I had ONE post. I hate to think of how many of Dawg's 6k + posts are dragging this forum down.

And Dawg, besides your incredibly and unreasonably rude tone, you are totally out of line calling the majority of readers of these posts stupid. Certainly one must take responsibility for engaging in a contract without reading the fine print, but the vast majority of people in the world have more important things in their lives than cell phones and are almost never able to invest the exhaustive amounts of time it takes to thoroughly investigate phones and plans before purchasing them. If these people have been mislead, whether actively or passively, they have a right to be upset by it.

Regardless, most people are seeking information or help, not attitude.

And no, I am not some coward hiding behind a different user name - but you must have a lot of enemies out there to suspect something like that. What I am is someone who took the time to sign up for a forum because I didn't like the way I saw someone bullying other users. So in the future, please consider whether you are actually contributing something helpful before you post, or whether you are just clogging bandwidth with your derisive and vacuous retorts.

You owe me and all of the other readers of this thread an apology for wasting out time.

PS: Does anyone know if Verizon is going to support GPS on the Blackberry 8800 any time soon?

That was a joke. Metro out.

I think you owe me an apology for having to read all the whining.
Do you really want to bring up wasting time??

Dawg is no problem in here, people seeking info is fine and thats what the board is for but the repeated rants are getting old and have nothing new to offer.