Verizon Tech Support - Always Reformat?!?

One of the things on my list of 18 To-dos today was to figure out the solution to a problem with my Treo 700W. Last week the voicemail notification icon was stuck on. I searched the different settings and preferences, I deleted one of my archived voice mails, I rebooted the phone, and I listened to the archived emails and resaved them. Nothing.

So I called Verizon while I waited for my wife to run into the store. The Verizon tech support is horrible. I have blogged about this on several occasions. I am not kidding, the guy told me the only way to get rid of a stuck notification icon is to a hard reset of the phone. This is the equivalent of doing a Format C:\. I would have to back everything up first, carefully check things to ensure this was ready, do the hard reset, cross fingers hoping it all gets restored, and then begin the process of reloading and resyncing. Definitely not a fun process. I swear they use one tech support script:

1. Listen to the caller and see what their problem is.
2. Tell them to perform a hard reset on phone.
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 until they hang up in frustration, or perform the hard reset which eliminates all problems we have to deal with.

Naturally I became immediately skeptical (as is so often the case with tech support people these days). This afternoon while I was eating lunch I Googled and found the solution in the fourth page I hit: leave yourself a voicemail, listen to it, and delete it. Freaking simple. Problem solved.

Verizon - you guys are suffering from the internal ID10T error. Complete morons.

Windows Mobile DST Patch - More frustration

I swear this must be a full moon as my software frustrations with Palm and likely Microsoft continue today...

I get home this evening. I have a list of 24 things to do before I leave for the airport in the morning to head to Seattle. I check the mail and see a postcard from Palm telling me to immediately download a Daylight Savings Time (DST) patch for my one year old Treo 700W. Great, just what I need. Last weekend I spent an hour updating all my computers with the XP DST patch, now I have to get the phone updated with no time to do it.

I pop open the PC and download email and set up my phone to sync using ActiveSync 4.1, which is the version I got with the phone. I just installed it on my new machine several weeks ago. I get an email from Palm noting that I better update my Windows Mobile machine with the DST patch. This email was delivered at 7:07pm EST, after the workday on the day before the new Daylight Savings Time kicks in here in the USA. Less than 37 hours before the deadline. Who decided this was a good idea?!?!?

Reading through the steps I have to upgrade to ActiveSync v4.5. So I do. I follow the steps as I am instructed as a good user should. What does this get me? How about a whole new Active Sync profile. What does this mean? It means that the PC and the phone are being completely reintroduced to each other as if they never met before. What the heck?!?!? Shouldn't one think it should perform an upgrade when you go from 4.1 to 4.5 and it would use the same settings? Thanks Microsoft, nice work.

So now I have to reset all my options and make sure I don't lose anything. Never the case though as SplashID (tool I use to store all my passwords) dumped the database. I have to reconnect it to the phone, cross my fingers and pray the passwords stored on my phone sync back to the now empty database on my phone. Fortunately I recovered all the information and was able to recall a password I changed just before I left a client today.

Thanks for making my night Palm and Microsoft. What are you guys thinking? Just in Time compiles are one thing, but Just in Time Deployments (JITD) are INSANE. All I got to say is: this patch better work!!!! Can't wait to see how all this works Sunday morning.

And don't even get me started on the moron congress people who thought this was such a great idea. I doubt they had even a slight clue on the impact they had the day they voted for the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Before this little detour the only thing I did on my list was eat dinner. Twenty-three items to go. No problem, my flight is not until 9:30am. Argh.