Timothy copied Consumerist on his EECB to Verizon. While he likes his new HTC Droid Incredible a lot, he’s deeply disappointed in how many applications the phone shipped to him with. “Effectively, we are paying you for the privilege of having to repeatedly be harassed by your adware,” he writes. Do you agree, or is Timothy overreacting?
Ladies & Gentlemen,
My name is Timothy [redacted] and I have been a Verizon customer for many years. I am also an I.T. Director at a large hospital in the [redacted] area where one of the areas under my purview is our Telecom group where I am responsible for the telecom architecture, hardware and mobile strategies.
The reason I am writing is that I have recently purchased your new Android device, the HTC Incredible, for my personal use as well as for review to determine if it would be a suitable smartphone platform for our enterprise.
On a positive note, I am all but thoroughly thrilled with this device. It accomplishes everything I had expected in this highly anticipated tool, with the exception of the abysmal battery performance.
That is not why I am contacting you, though. What I am writing about is Verizon’s deplorable, and borderline unethical, inclusion of scads of bloatware and adware applications on this device, which in and of itself is a disgusting practice by an OEM, be it smartphones, desktops, laptops or any other related type of device, but made all the more unacceptable by the fact that there is no possible way of removing said applications. Dare I remind you that these devices we purchase from you are our property? To do with as we see fit? We are not renting or otherwise leasing these devices from you.
The worst offender of this lot is the bloatware application called CityID. Yes, I have no doubt whatsoever that Verizon received a sizable payment to include this garbage on OUR devices, but there is next to zero value-add to your customers. By customer, I mean those of us that pay you, each and every month, quite a bit of money to use your services. If you have a customer that does find value in an application of this nature, they could have simply gone and installed it from your Android app store, but it was apparently more financially advantageous to foist it upon us all with no means to remove it, again, from OUR devices. The borderline unethical charge that I lodge against you comes from the fact that this application repeatedly reminds us to sign up for the pay-to-use version. Effectively, we are paying you for the privilege of having to repeatedly be harassed by your adware.
This is the type of action that costs you customers and loyalty as well as corporate business, as I will most certainly not be recommending this platform to our enterprise, nor our individual users. This is also the type of action that forces those who are more technical astute to “root” their devices to remove this type of garbage, thereby voiding their warranties.
I would very much appreciate any feedback you could offer me in regard to when we will be able to remove the bloatware and adware, and when this practice will cease. Until such time, you will see no further business from me, nor from my organization.
Sincerely,
Timothy
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I’ve had my Incredible for over a week now, I just counted up about 10-15 pre-loaded apps that can’t be removed (without rooting). Some I’ve found useful, such as the Google Maps and built-in ringtone editor, but there’s also Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr apps that I’ll never use.
Had I not seen CityID and the like in my app list, I would never have known they were there. I’ve never opened them and they’ve never popped up or otherwise prompted me for anything,
Not getting it! Menu/Settings/Applications/Manage applications/ and select the offending app and hit uninstall. Did this guy graduate from grade school?
Maybe you should actually try this on a pre-loaded app. There is no Uninstall button.
I would assume that graduating from grade school would require that one has the ability to read basic English? You, though, would prove that to not be the case, else you would have read in the OP’s post that the apps in question are not able to be uninstalled. Actually, unless mistaken, that was the utter entire point of the letter.
Yet another example of a totally unwarranted EECB. So you don’t like the bloatware. Fair enough, but complaining about bloatware does *not* warrant an EECB. By sending that, you have diminished their effectiveness and accomplished nothing in the process.
I’ve got a Motorola Droid. Tons of bloatware there, too, and no way to remove it.
Honestly, the Droid Incredible has a lot less bloatware than most devices I’ve used. It doesn’t even come with any of the Verizon stuff, you can choose to download it from the market. In fact, I think there was a review on cnet where they complimented the phone on the fact that it didn’t have any bloat ware. I think Tim is over reacting. I’ve used my droid since it’s release and I’ve never been bothered by cityID or any other app.
And people STILL drool over the thought of a “Verizon iPhone?”
Yeah, have fun with that one….
If you’ve bought a phone you should have every right to specify what you *don’t* want on your device that you bought. A company that forces you to be subjected to adware or bloatware that you didn’t ask for and can’t delete is reprehensible.
I’ve got a VZW Touch Pro 2 myself. When I got it, it was utter crap – Verizon bloatware everywhere, A-GPS chip crippled and locked down, no Internet Sharing app (for tethering), and no JetCet Printing like my Sprint TP2 came with.
It took about 45 minutes (and a bootloader replacement plus new ROM – MightyROM for the win) to SIM-unlock my phone, remove all the VZW junk with a new ROM, _and_ unlock the GPS chip so Google Maps could use it.
Verizon, seriously. WHY? We pay you through the nose (or at least my boss does) for phones that work and do enterprise-level connectivity. We don’t want consumer-grade adware on something that costs us $200 in the first place ($500 unlocked).