I bought a new Motorola V551 some months ago. I was distressed to find that Motorola no longer supplies a plastic "holster" with their phones that can clip onto your belt. If you want a belt clip, I was told, you have to buy a leather case for $29.99.

So I bought a case and that's what I used for about 4 months.

A short while ago, my dad bought a V551, and, surprise, his came with a plastic holster (same provider, different retail location) just like I had remembered Motorolas always did, sealed in the OEM box.

So, I figure mine must have been mispacked, I'll just get a generic holster from one of the mobile phone kiosks at the mall. So I stopped at the kiosk that's right outside of the Cingular store at the mall that I went to originally and asked for a clip to fit a V551.

The guy opens this drawer in his kiosk, and it is FILLED with clips for all models of phones. Not only does he have hundreds of them, but they're all original OEM clips, not generics.

I've since spoken to a few other people who bought phones from that particular Cingular location, and theirs did not come with holsters, either.

SO, it seems that the sales staff at Cingular Wireless in the WestFarms mall in West Hartford Connecticut might be making a few extra bucks by removing the clips from retail boxes before presenting them to the customers (the boxes are always open when they come from the back because the salesperson programs the phone in the back), and passing them off to their buddies outside for a buck or two each.

The guy at the kiosk was selling them for $10 a pop, and people were paying that. Free clips for $10. I told him I'd give him $3 and he agreed without arguing or bargaining.

Fuckers.

Disclaimer: I have only circumstantial evidence and no firm proof of any malfeasance on the part of Cingular, its employees, or of the kiosk in front or its owners or operators.

sympathy reply.

Do you believe in Karma, muppet? :D

Dear Mat,

You're among the least qualified persons on the planet Earth to make any value judgements regarding my karma, you simply have no idea.

Respectfully (but not very),

Muppet

My dearest darling muppet,

It was merely a jocular question relating your apparent bad luck in many areas to your angry-young-man persona on ?off, and not a value judgement. I even added a smiley face to emphasise it.

Yours non-judgementally,
Mat

Better Business Bureau
Letter to Cingular Wireless
Letter to the cell phone manufacturer
Letter to the local DA if you're feeling particularly pissed off.

Philo

Philo,

Yeah I've considered most of that list. I'll probably tap out a letter to each of them this weekend.

Maybe you could also set up a blog to let us know how this goes?

Oh, wait a minute... :P

(waits for the Cingular Wireless retailer to show up in this forum and this thread to grow to 400+ posts)

That'd be fucking sweet.

If you post a link they can claim that Fogcreek software is 'all over their stuff'

maybe they removed them to prevent unknowing customers from looking like total geeks?

That sounds a whole lot like theft to me.

Speaking of which...

Know the difference in a thief and a peeping tom?

A thief snatches watches.

I also have a Motorola V551 ... does anyone but me hate the menu structure? It's very nonintuitive and takes me forever to find what I'm looking for. Plus, there are hardly any built-in ring tones other than chimes, beeps, dings and squawks. My old phone, also a Motorola, had about 30 musical tones; now I suppose I'll have to pay for good ones.

Plus, in the old phone, the green Send button was on the right ... now it's on the left. Can't they just come up with a system and stick to it? Every time I get a new phone it's a huge learning curve, even with the same manufacturer.

Don't get me started about the whole two-year contract thing ... purchasing a phone and buying phone service should be completely separate, as they now are with land lines.

Well you can get your Cingular GSM phone unlocked and then go with any carrier. I dunno if the unlocking is technically a breach of DMCA or what.

If you get a bluetooth adapter for your PC, you don't have to pay for ringtones, you can upload wavs, midis, and mp3s to the phone as long as they're not too large. It's how I get my photos off of it.

Thanks, Muppet ... time to sit down with the manual and figure it out. My phone does have Bluetooth but I haven't had time to fool around with it yet.

The manual is disastrously unhelpful.

Everything is a breach of the DMCA.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68492,00.html

Well in that case the claim is totally specious, made only in the spirit of "eh, why not" to try and scare the kid into complying with their demands.

Also, that kid deserves what he gets with hair like that.

"sympathy reply."

You can't sympathy reply to yourself! It's against the rules!

sympathy rebuttal.

sympathy troll.