[gitano1]

This will be my third Bold through Verizon in 5 months. The current one has never worked with with Bluetooth, even with a BlueAnt Supertooth 3 it is nearly inaudible. It won't pair with my MacBook which doesn't even see it in Discovery mode. Then today the GPS suddenly was unable to find the current location. There had been brief problems with this before but they usually resolved fairly quickly. This morning it took 15 minutes to find itself. This afternoon on my evening commute it never found its location. 45 minutes on the phone with first and second level techs at Verizon finally got one of them to admit that the problems may be related through the antenna which possibly could be shared by both apps. The problems have definitely increased with time. The GPS has worked pretty well for several months. Bluetooth was always a bit flaky with poor volume coming through headsets which led to the Supertooth. When that failed to work I bought a wired headset.
I am told that the Bold is the best Blackberry ever. I would sure like to believe that. My previous Bold shared a problem noted elsewhere on the forum by someone else, a poor microphone or transmitter, never established which was responsible. IF Verizon isn't recycling the returned, defective phones then there must be a lot of lemons out there. RIM needs to do better quality control. They also need to thoroughly check out returned phones before they certify them for redistribution. My second Bold was a factory certified rebuild. Obviously, no one checked out the Bluetooth. If the next one proves to be less than perfect I am going to switch to Droid.

[bodeb]

This will be my third Bold through Verizon in 5 months. The current one has never worked with with Bluetooth, even with a BlueAnt Supertooth 3 it is nearly inaudible. It won't pair with my MacBook which doesn't even see it in Discovery mode. Then today the GPS suddenly was unable to find the current location. There had been brief problems with this before but they usually resolved fairly quickly. This morning it took 15 minutes to find itself. This afternoon on my evening commute it never found its location. 45 minutes on the phone with first and second level techs at Verizon finally got one of them to admit that the problems may be related through the antenna which possibly could be shared by both apps. The problems have definitely increased with time. The GPS has worked pretty well for several months. Bluetooth was always a bit flaky with poor volume coming through headsets which led to the Supertooth. When that failed to work I bought a wired headset.
I am told that the Bold is the best Blackberry ever. I would sure like to believe that. My previous Bold shared a problem noted elsewhere on the forum by someone else, a poor microphone or transmitter, never established which was responsible. IF Verizon isn't recycling the returned, defective phones then there must be a lot of lemons out there. RIM needs to do better quality control. They also need to thoroughly check out returned phones before they certify them for redistribution. My second Bold was a factory certified rebuild. Obviously, no one checked out the Bluetooth. If the next one proves to be less than perfect I am going to switch to Droid.

I think I read somewhere that RIM contracts out the refurbishing of their devices. I would think that a random number of the refurbs would be sent back to RIM for them to check them out and determine how good a job the refurb shop is doing.

[flackberry]

That is my understanding as well. I'll be on my second replacement (3rd device) this week. As test sheet is included in the box showing everything passed, but its obviously just something generic they include. With the multiple replacements people get its like they don't even test them at all. Maybe they just receive a bad device, clean it, reload the OS and send out.

[gitano1]

The new replacement came on Tuesday. I loaded all of the software and settings into the phone. It seemed to run well. Some of the functions were better than any of its predecessors. However, when I attempted to use the GPS it could not find my location. I thought it might be a temporary problem, but by morning it was obvious that it wasn't a system problem. The phone was defective.
I called Verizon's customer service, reviewed the history of the last 9 months beginning with the defective Tour. I told them that I did not believe that either of the last two Bolds I was sent were, in fact, returned to any "factory" for repair or evaluation, that they were simply cleaned and put into a box which said they were "Factory Certified". It was and is my belief that Verizon is recycling phones which are returned to them as defective and not doing any repairs or testing. There is no way a phone should be passed as functional when one or more of it basic components are not working. I consider BlueTooth to be pretty basic, as is the GPS. I really would like to know how they can claim that a phone has been tested and approved when one or both of those functions are non-functional.
They offered to have another phone sent. I told them I was done with that. I also said that as far as I was concerned they were in violation of the contract. I had never received as fully functional phone which was their side of the contract. I said that unless they could provide me with a phone that worked I would simply cancel my service and go to AT& T and get an iPhone.
We went round and round in circles and they finally agreed to give me my choice of new phones at the discount rate I would have paid if this was my two year upgrade less the $100 I had already paid for my Tour in February. With that deal in hand I decided to get a Droid X.
The new phone was initially pretty intimidating, and is definitely not for someone who wants a toaster. It does take some savvy. However, three days later I am ecstatic with it. Everything works, it is incredibly fast, came with a 16 GB media card, 6 GB of internal RAM, and a 1 GHz processor that leaves the Blackberries in the dust. The Google system is far easier to work with than App World or even Crackberry's app store. The battery is holding up as well or better than the battery in my Bold.
I loved the Blackberry form. I would have stayed with it for years to come, but their quality control is absurdly bad as this forum and several other can testify to based on the number of phones with major malfunctions. I am highly unlikely to ever buy another Blackberry. I can attribute that to both Blackberry and Verizon, neither of which seem to be willing to take responsibility for defective equipment. The continual stream of new models creates orphans among those who don't think of a $500 piece of equipment as disposable.