Sonchips Data

I talk very highly regarding the services of Verizon Wireless. However, there are those people that express their every discontent with Verizon. I ask a few questions and I found out that, technically, it was not a Verizon store that did them wrong. It was simply a third party store that apparently doesn’t how to treat the typical Verizon customer.

When walking into a “Verizon” store, there are several things you want to take note on. I am going to provide to you, a few ways that you can tell if a Verizon store is either a corporate store or a third party store. These clues are normally legit for other providers such as Sprint, Alltell, and AT&T.

A list of things to look for:

1. Store Sign: Prior to walking into the store, take a look at the name of the store. Normally, it will have “Verizon Wireless” as the sign. But there are two versions of this sign. The first being ONLY “Verizon Wireless”. The other being “Verizon Wireless” and underneath it will say words like, “Premium Retailer”. Something along those lines.
2. Name Tags: As you walk in, you should be greeted by a representative. Take a look at the name badges. If it says anything other than “Verizon Wireless”, you maybe dealing with a third party store. You can also ask the representative if they are corporate. If they reply with an attitude, it’s probably a third party store.
3. Phone Displays: Scan the phone displays. Keep in mind, that all corporate stores or kiosks normally have live phones (meaning the phones are assigned numbers and are fully functional). The third party stores normally utilize the dummy phones (phones are plastic models and have no function whatsoever).
4. Phone Usage by Representatives: Chances are you have heard them answer the phone with this opening line, “Thank you for calling Verizon Wireless.” Now, if you are unsure if this is a corporate store, listen to how they answer the phone. A third party store will normally answer their phones with the name of the business. However, I have also heard answer the phone with “Verizon. This is Daniel. How can I help you?”
5. Phone Contact: If the representative helping you picks up the phone and starts to yapping with somebody, in general, this should be a big indicator. For example: If he or she has to access your account, they would have to call Verizon and deal with in over the phone. The last time I checked, third-party stores limited to what they can handle on your account. I am not sure to how true this still is.
6. Charging Your Account: As far as I know, if you buy a phone, add a line, or even buy accessories, only the corporate locations are able to charge the total to your account. This can be useful if you have a need/want to fullfil but don’t quite have the money yet. Always nice. A third-party store can only cash you out, meaning you buy the items/phones then and there. They are not authorized to charge your account.

Corporate Store: Notice the Logo of Verizon has no other information like the photo below does.

Third-Party Store: Notice the Wireless Zone and Premium Retailer under the Verizon Logo.

NOTE: If you go to http://maps.google.com and type in “Verizon” or “Verizon Wireless” you are going to come up with all kinds of stores.

Just keep in mind that if you are looking to find a corporate store, feel free to call them and ask them if they are a corporate location or not. Don’t be afraid to do this. Honestly, I would much rather deal with a corporate store for these reasons alone:

• Charging Your Account: As I have said a little earlier, to my knowledge, the third-party locations are unable to charge to your account. This is only a corporate store “can-do”.
• Customer Service: I am not speaking to all third-party locations, however, a few of them did me wrong. Customer Service at a corporate location is going to be a lot better for the simple fact that they want the customer to be completely happy. Now, they, meaning Verizon, will not feed into the stupid materialistic behavior. But, Verizon will take damn good care of their customers.
• Dummy Phones: Are you serious? I want a new phone and I want to see how it functions. How am I going to go into a store and play with a plastic body of a phone that has sticker on the face and lkike what I see? This is almost like going to a car dealership and walking in only to see life size plastic care! Seriously!
• Small Charges Add Up: Third-Party locations tend to charge the user to copy a phonebook or back a phonebook up. They also tend to charge the user for PAYING A BILL! Seriously. I have seen it first hand. This is actually the initial reason why I started looking into the differences of corporate vs third-party stores. I was standing next to accessories in a store located in Findlay, OH when I overheard a customer say that she had to pay for her bill. The representative said, “Ok. No problem.” As he got the customer’s billing information, he said the total for the bill and then tacked on another $5.00 for paying her bill. For example: A bill due amount was $100.00. After theytack on the little $5.00 charge to pay the bill there, the total was $105.00. Some would say that it is just a minimal fee for taking payment. Let’s think about this.
  

  You have company provide you with cell phone service. You go to pay said company’s bill. But, you have to pay said company an additional $5.00 to pay your bill. Why? Because the payment is not going to Verizon directly. You are having a third-party store pay the bill for you and for the convience of doing so, just cost the customer $5.00. No ice cream cone for you!

So, there I was.  I was looking for a certain application that would forward my text messages.  I was wanting to look at a site that would show me all of the apps that were in the Android Market Place.  I never knew that there was a site for this.  I have added a link in the right column so you can get there and check it out too.

Also, with this little link, did you know you can actually install apps to your phone remotely?  For example, If you are at the office and you forgot your phone in the car or house, you can select an app you would like to install and it (meaning the web site) will send it to the phone.  It is pretty damn nifty!  But, below is the link.

http://market.android.com

A little while ago, somebody was telling me about a prepaid cell phone service. I guess we got on to the subject about these ore aid services because we were talking about how high a standard provider’s bill can be. I have friends all the time coming up to me asking me about the Verizon service.

The Verizon service is another article I will type up and let you all read about it. But, if somebody is talking about getting a cell phone, that wants good service and reception in the Kansas City Metropolitan area, then this is one of the best deals they can get on. It is called StraightTalk. StraightTalk is a service that rides along the Verizon network and you get the same great coverage. Granted you have to buy a phone, from Walmart, and that can easily run you anywhere from 40 bucks to about 200 bucks. Keep in mind that you are buying the phone right out, which prevents you subscriber from having any kind of contract or monthly billing cycles.

If you have a bad credit history/report, have bad luck with phones, or just simply don’t want to deal with monthly nightmares of the billing cycles, then I would strongly look into the possibility of having the pre-paid service.

The next question is this: “How much is the service?”

Thats simple. There are two prices. You have the empowering option of putting out 30 whomping bucks for a thousand texts, minutes, and a little bit of web time. I am not sure how much bandwidth you get with this. The second option, has a cost of only 45 bucks and that will give you an unlimited number of minutes, unlimited text messages, and unlimited web surfing on your web enabled Walmart bought phone.

Like I said, the phones range from 40 dollars to about, I believe, I have seen about 200 bucks. The service is very well worth it.

Here is another side note for this topic. You can go online and access your account. If you are a teen or somebody wanting to get out on their own or don’t want people to watch your minutes, you can get the pre-paid service and no minutes are tracked. The only thing your account will show is how many minutes out of a thousand you have remaining, or if you have the unlimited plan, you will see the word, UNLIMITED!

Great phones, great prices, best deal without the monthly contracts or headaches.

You can visit their site located here: http://www.straighttalk.com

Everybody might have heard about “Visual Voice Mail” (a.k.a. VVM), but incase you didn’t, VVM allows the subscriber to select which messages he or she wants to hear next.  For example, if the subscriber has 3 new voice messages, they can play the second message first, then the first, then the third.  You do not have to listen to them in the order in which they were received.  This is a very convenient way to check your messages.  You also have the option to delete the message if you already know that you do not want to hear it.

Let’s take VVM to the next level!  To do this, you just need a simple free account from YouMail.  You can get an account a couple of ways. 

1. Logon to youmail.com and register.
2. On your iPhone (App Store), Android Phone (Market Place), Blackberry, you can search the term, “youmail”.

YouMail allows the user to login via computer or phone application to retrieve the messages.  Here is the great thing.  If you are not able to take your phone to work or to a function, if somebody calls you and leaves a message, youmail.com will send you an email telling you who attempted to call and who left a message.  You can then either use your phone to listen to the messages or login to the youmail.com website and listen to the message.

This simple VVM system is a plus in my book.  It is very easy to use and yet, so complex!

Another great feature I LOVE talking about on this system is the fact that you can designate certain messages being played for certain numbers.  You can create a group so a certain message is played with those select people call you.  For example, if you have your boss and four other people from work that call you all the time, you can have a funny message greet them and tell them to leave a message.  In the other hand, if you have a car dealership that WILL NOT leave you alone because you test drove a car six months ago, you can add that number to the list and they will be greeted with a NUMBER DISCONNECTED message.  Not only that, after they hear that your number has been disconnected, you ditch the call!!! Sweetness!

You ditching a call just means that as soon as the selected greeting is played, YouMail will disconnect the caller and they have NO option to leave a message!!! This helps in preventing people from continious calling.  It works well!

I have been using smartphones for a while.  The one true thing I have noticed is that, regardless of what you use your phone for, you can always use more.  I have been with Verizon Wireless for about three years now.  I have had almost every Blackberry (as some would call a Dingle Berry) there was on the market.  When the first surge of Android phones pumped the market full of aww, I was interested.

I found a couple of Android phones that were nice, however, there was always room for improvement.  I came across the Droid X by Verizon Wireless.

There are several pros and very limited cons to this current day Circus Phone!

The first thing you might notice is the overly el-hu-mung-go screenage.  This is massive.  Here are some of the PROS:

• Massive screen.
• HDMI port on side of phone.
• Very accurate touch screen.
• USB connection has four different user selectable modes.
• GPS works great with size of screen and GPS accuracy.
• Typing on phone has option of using swipe method or classic “pecking” method
• Built in bluetooth (what phone doesn’t these days, but still a PRO)
• In general, this phone is the $h!t…

I am very happy with this phone and would recommend it to somebody looking for a computer that fits in the palm of their hand!

A lot of people do not know this factoid: The Android phone system is a LINUX based system… Meaning, when you phone seems to be slipping a little, running slow, hesitating, and just doing some wierd $h!t, turn the phone off.  Wait a couple of seconds and then turn it back on.  WHAMO!  Problems fixed!

Wow!  Let me tell you about this application that I found a little bit ago.  I was looking for a program that would be used on my Android OS phone, the Verizon Droid X, and I wanted to be able to keep up with all of my maintenance, fill-ups, repairs, and anything else having something to do with my car.

Well, I found the perfect solution.  The programmer, Armond Avanes, is a JAVA Developer that developes applications for the Android environment.  Mr. Avanes developed one hell of a program.

There are several pros and hardly any cons at all.  Some of the pros are simply these points:

• Record all fill-ups, maintenance repairs, oil changes, and anything having to do with the vehicle.
• Able to track several vehicles at once.
• If you are selling a vehicle, you can send the entire service record via email to somebody interested.
• Technical support is phenominal.  Mr. Avanes responds very promptly to emails.
• Different type of charts and graphs to illustrate different scenarios.
• aCar predicts when you next fill up will be based of history of fillups for particular vehicle.
• Tracks last month, current month, and last three months of fillups.
• Assists in budgeting monthly fuel cost without any heartache.

There are so many pros to having this program, that I don’t have the time to list them.  You can visit his site located at:

http://zonewalker.com/

You can see some of the screenshots below.  I would definetly put this little application on my phone if I didn’t already have it.  It’s a PLUS!