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Update issue - vision problems!

I am so frustrated I could scream! Two phone calls to Verizon Customer Tech Support which ended up with them giving me the Motorola phone number. Two calls to them and I am no better off than yesterday at 9:00 when my phone was updated.

Problem: I have vision problems and had my contacts, bookmarks, etc., set to a black background with white text as it is easier for me to read. Now I get an update, which I hate by the way, and everything is white with black text which cannot be changed.

Verizon: "Nothing we can do"

Motorola: "Try and find an App that might do that"

Me: "You made my phone practically useless to me now and I want this fixed!"

My wish.....that someone here can help me without changing my whole phone to other themes that I am not interested in. I am a professional and do not want a phone that looks like something a 17 year old would have. Nothing wrong with it, just not for me. As far as I am concerned Verizon should be giving me a new phone that hasn't had the update yet. No satisfaction from them will send me packing as soon as my contract is up. I am disgusted at this point and extremely frustrated.

HELP!!!!!!

Thanks................sally

Comments

keezy

Unfortunately, there really is nothing you can do, since you do not want to completely change your phone (which, by the way, is a violation of this forum to talk about)

I think the new colors of menus are terrible, and should be changed back to the black background. But what they told you is correct, you can either look for an app to do this (which involves r-wording your phone) or just deal with it since there's no way to change it.

sallyshouse

I have gone through hundreds of Apps. I just want something that keeps my icons looking the way they do. I can't even see the progress bar at the top since it was changed from red to a blue so light it is practically white. I can't afford to buy a new phone and now I can hardly read my contacts, etc. Verizons lack of help, after umpteen years as an Alltel/Verizon customer, leaves me speechless. Surely I can't be the only person out there that uses a black background with white text? If I knew how to create an App I would, and I guarantee it would be created with common sense.

thanks for letting me vent!

Sally

keezy

sallyshouse wrote:
I have gone through hundreds of Apps. I just want something that keeps my icons looking the way they do. I can't even see the progress bar at the top since it was changed from red to a blue so light it is practically white. I can't afford to buy a new phone and now I can hardly read my contacts, etc. Verizons lack of help, after umpteen years as an Alltel/Verizon customer, leaves me speechless. Surely I can't be the only person out there that uses a black background with white text? If I knew how to create an App I would, and I guarantee it would be created with common sense.

thanks for letting me vent!

Sally

I completely agree, and there are other posts about this, that the white background is absolutely absurd. A lot of us on here want the black background back. As far as your status bar at the top, I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about. My old one was a light gray - almost white, and the new one since the update is a dark blue - nowhere near white.

dirkbonn

I'm not trying to be a "smart a$$" here, and with the original posters vision problems, I can understand his/her concern regarding the contrast in the background color to the word color.

That being said I really don't get a lot of the people complaining so vehemently regarding this issue. I mean, for the most part, everything in this world is white background with black print. i.e. newspapers, books, magazines, heck, even this forum.

I would venture to say that if Android OS had always been white background/black words and hadn't only been changed with the latest update, this thread/issue wouldn't be here.

Just my 2 cents on a lazy Sunday afternoon,

B33

sallyshouse wrote:
I am so frustrated I could scream! Two phone calls to Verizon Customer Tech Support which ended up with them giving me the Motorola phone number. Two calls to them and I am no better off than yesterday at 9:00 when my phone was updated.

Problem: I have vision problems and had my contacts, bookmarks, etc., set to a black background with white text as it is easier for me to read. Now I get an update, which I hate by the way, and everything is white with black text which cannot be changed.

Verizon: "Nothing we can do"
Motorola: "Try and find an App that might do that"
Me: "You made my phone practically useless to me now and I want this fixed!"

My wish.....that someone here can help me without changing my whole phone to other themes that I am not interested in. I am a professional and do not want a phone that looks like something a 17 year old would have. Nothing wrong with it, just not for me. As far as I am concerned Verizon should be giving me a new phone that hasn't had the update yet. No satisfaction from them will send me packing as soon as my contract is up. I am disgusted at this point and extremely frustrated.

HELP!!!!!!

Thanks................sally

Sally give this a try i know it wont change the Color but it may help you a Little. Go into settings > then Display > Then touch the Brightness once there take your brightness bar an slide it left all the way to were just alittle is left an also uncheck Automatic Brightness. As i said it's not going to change the color but it might be easier on your eye's.

Just like on my computer i ajusted the display on my X down to a lower level because it was to white an bright for me but i did'nt want to do away with my X an i had my display turned down before the gingerbread update anyway. But i'm not a fan of this new style of arrangement eather to me moto totally screwed up the calling keyboard on the bottom its nice an black as it should be but up by the 1 ,2 an 3 key an were you enter in the search box its almost washed out it so white. They should at lest maid it to were you could have a choice selection to go back to were it was. or change the color to what fit your needs instead of one size fits all. If you know what i mean. Hopes this helps ya out alittle. B33

sallyshouse

Thank you all, I appreciate your taking the time to write.

I do have the briteness level turned down to help me. It helps but doesn't solve the problem. Can anyone tell me....if they get enough complaints, do they ever change anything back? This is the first time that this has happened to me. I'm not fond of the update at all and would go back in a heartbeat. Do Verizon people read these posts at all? If not corrected, I will buy a new phone, not at Verizon, that meets my needs.

Again, thanks for your help!

Sally

Cody21

Yea, I thihk we're pretty much stuck with the new "feature". This issue/feature was complained about with the initial SOAK release of GB. Many hated it and told Moto that we did. There's been no hint or rumour of them addressing it or reverting it back. I agree with you - this should have been an OPTION, not something slammed down our throats. There have been several things like this forced on us with GB ... we're stuck with either living with it, finding an APP (which I don't know of one), or switching to a different phone & possibly OS. If you truly have some medical issue that you can prove, I would just escalate it with Verizon and see if you can't get swapped with a different phone -- but go to the store and check them out first to see if that feature is different on other phones with GB or FROY (if you stick with Android). Good luck.

gerio

sallyshouse wrote:
Thank you all, I appreciate your taking the time to write.

I do have the briteness level turned down to help me. It helps but doesn't solve the problem. Can anyone tell me....if they get enough complaints, do they ever change anything back? This is the first time that this has happened to me. I'm not fond of the update at all and would go back in a heartbeat. Do Verizon people read these posts at all? If not corrected, I will buy a new phone, not at Verizon, that meets my needs.

Again, thanks for your help!

Sally

Verizon people do read these posts. However...

Verizon is NOT the manufacturer of the phone, they are the phone service provider. Your problem lies with the appearance of the OS by the Android developers. Hence, if you buy an Android phone on another carrier, then you most likely will have the same problem.

I've always maintained that phone service should be chosen by the carrier's quality of their service and how big the coverage area is, not by the phones they carry. Regardless of whether you are with Verizon or another carrier, you will have to choose the phone that you are able to use. And it appears that this phone CANNOT be an Android phone. There are other choices of phones and OSs on Verizon...iPhones, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry..Perhaps a phone with one of these OSs will be more suitable for your needs.

Point being, it sounds like an Android phone, regardless of the carrier, issn't going to serve your needs.

Geri O

sallyshouse

Actually an Android phone did serve my needs until this update to GB. If this issue was brought up to them before the update was sent out, I find it hard to believe that making a black background with white text an option would be all that difficult to do.

My point is.....people should have n choices. A developer should not be making decisions for me and deciding what works for me just because it works for him/her. In reading these boards I have come to the conclusion that they really don't care what people want or think. Suggestions go to the wayside. We need phones and will pay the price no matter what. By going to another carrier I am telling Verizon that I don't appreciate how they handled my problem. Surely there are DROID phones sitting in a box at the store that wont be updated until they are turned on. Being a loyal customer that I am and paying the price for the plan that we have , giving me a new phone w/o being updated would not have killed them. I guess I come from a different time when you bent over backwards to please a customer. Times have changed, sad to say.

Again.....just venting. Thank you all.......

Cody21

Agreed .... Now, "it is what it is ...." :smileysad:

keiffers

well the choice to us is that we can change phones whenever we want no matter how much we think its not right.....its all a marketing ploy the way I see it. i really think all carriers want problems to happen with their phones so the customer gets frustrated enough that they either buy a new phone (for full price since it always fails when your within your requirement time) or you just up and leave for another carrier, which then means you have to pay a cancellation fee plus pay the new carrier for a phone and activation, etc.

Customer service has gone out the window and companies these days for the most part don't care anymore....saw a twitter post a few weeks ago about a guy who tweeted he had the hankering for a porterhouse steak from Mortons (those of you in the NE know all about Mortons). He was just being silly on Twitter about it but had a guy from Mortons meet him at Newark Airport with what he tweeted about, all done within the span of 2 hours. Mortons Corporate actually read what a customer wanted, and albeit a silly tweet, took it upon themselves to go that 'extra mile'

go do a search on Google 'Peter Shankman Mortons' and read about the greatest customer service story ever told for the full story.

This is a good example of what customers SHOULD do. I'm not saying that motorola or Verizon should give us a free phone or whatever, but if we're posting here, on twitter or elsewhere, then come help us, instead of saying 'you're not allowed to do that' or 'a factory reset will fixt the problem' - a factory reset should NOT have to be done regularly to fix problems....that's like reinstalling Windows everytime it pops up an error message....its NOT NECESSARY!

Ok I've vented

dirkbonn

keiffers wrote:
well the choice to us is that we can change phones whenever we want no matter how much we think its not right.....its all a marketing ploy the way I see it. i really think all carriers want problems to happen with their phones so the customer gets frustrated enough that they either buy a new phone (for full price since it always fails when your within your requirement time) or you just up and leave for another carrier, which then means you have to pay a cancellation fee plus pay the new carrier for a phone and activation, etc.

Ok I've vented

Pity the poor VP that wrote the memo suggesting this method as a way to boost profits. "Let's chase our customers to another carrier so we can collect the early cancellation fees" ( his thought process went something like this) Let's see, we can try to keep him happy and collect $150 per month from a customer, (That's $1,800.00 per year) or, if we make him so frustrated with our phones, he switches to AT&T..... YEAH! WE COLLECT $350.00! "Hey Herb, call all our phone manufacturers and tell them to start designing problems into our phones..... We're gonna make profits hand over fist with this idea!"

The high ETF's were meant as an incentive to keep customers from jumping ship to another carrier.

Please, PLEASE tell me you were suggesting this with tongue-in-cheek.

Obviously, I was having a little fun with this post, but you do see the fallacy in this, right?

keiffers

dirkbonn wrote:

Pity the poor VP that wrote the memo suggesting this method as a way to boost profits. "Let's chase our customers to another carrier so we can collect the early cancellation fees" ( his thought process went something like this) Let's see, we can try to keep him happy and collect $150 per month from a customer, (That's $1,800.00 per year) or, if we make him so frustrated with our phones, he switches to AT&T..... YEAH! WE COLLECT $350.00! "Hey Herb, call all our phone manufacturers and tell them to start designing problems into our phones..... We're gonna make profits hand over fist with this idea!"

The high ETF's were meant as an incentive to keep customers from jumping ship to another carrier.

Please, PLEASE tell me you were suggesting this with tongue-in-cheek.

Obviously, I was having a little fun with this post, but you do see the fallacy in this, right?

Look it's my opinion....if you don't like it, then don't reply to it. There is alot of truth to this though.....yeah that's $1.8 mil more a year than they would have had. $350 x all the customers that leave because they are so frustrated with the inaction of the company to fixing the problems - that's ALOT of money to lose due to the inaction of their customer service, their engineers, their shops, in not fixing the problem or thinking outside the box. I'm not saying give the customer the farm, but if you want to be successful you have to listen to your customers. VZW used to listen to their customers.....when I was previously with VZW, they actually bent over backwards to fix your issue, but now since I came back to them, they do not care. They just tell you that you need to do a factory reset on your phone, or as alot of people here want to say 'its not the phone, it's app related'

But they are ALL out for a profit no matter what anyone thinks. those CEO's don't care what happens to a customer as long as their bottom line is in the black...PERIOD!

galaxie500fb

I personally don't think the intention is to drive a customer to another carrier but instead encourage you to upgrade ur phone which can lock you into another 2 years. Unfortunately everyone admits there are problems except Motorola and Verizon.

droidsw

"Back in the day", Verizon only had to contend with lower tech phones. Now, with "smart" phones by multiple OEMs, I honestly think Verizon's customer service is overwhelmed and out of their area of expertise and throwing a replacement phone at the issue, or reading from a prepared "troubleshooting" script its the best we can expect.

Now Moto, that's another story.

galaxie500fb

I`m not feeling any pity for verizon if their tech support is overwhelmed due to their inability to diagnose problems on phones that they choose to offer to their customers. It`s rather pathetic really when a call is placed to tech support and the only thing they offer is to guide me through a factory reset which only delays the reappearance of problems or another phone of the same model. I own 2 droid x`s. one running stock software the other has a voided warranty. Guess which one has all the problems?

droidsw

I wasn't making excuses for Verizon. Just making an observation from my personal point of view.

mortb

Verizon people do read these posts. However...

Verizon is NOT the manufacturer of the phone, they are the phone service provider. Your problem lies with the appearance of the OS by the Android developers. Hence, if you buy an Android phone on another carrier, then you most likely will have the same problem.

I've always maintained that phone service should be chosen by the carrier's quality of their service and how big the coverage area is, not by the phones they carry. Regardless of whether you are with Verizon or another carrier, you will have to choose the phone that you are able to use. And it appears that this phone CANNOT be an Android phone. There are other choices of phones and OSs on Verizon...iPhones, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry..Perhaps a phone with one of these OSs will be more suitable for your needs.

Point being, it sounds like an Android phone, regardless of the carrier, issn't going to serve your needs.

Geri O

All the Droids do not have the same OS. I have both the Droid X and the R2D2 version of the Droid 2. The Droid X, of course, has Gingerbread; but the Droid 2 is still running on Froyo (which, as we all know, had its own set of problems). Both were manufactured by Motorola. I'm not sure but a lot of the problems the the Motorola Droids have might possibly be connected with the Motoblur system. HTC, Samsung, etc, might have their own operating systems and not Froyo or GB. However, what I believe is that all the smartphones have broblems. Read some of the messages on the other boards, such as the IPhone Forum. And in a lot of cases, it may be that the smartphone is smarter than the owner.

sallyshouse

Well, this has been an interesting journey to say the least. I have gotten some excellent ideas here and appreciate those who monitor these forums and give of their time to answer questions. Does anyone remember the original problem? Ha! I have come to terms with the fact that Motorola and Verizon will cave for no one. We were treated the way a customer should be treated at the old Altell store.....ahhh....the good old days.

Goodnight all!

Sally

keezy

sallyshouse wrote:
Well, this has been an interesting journey to say the least. I have gotten some excellent ideas here and appreciate those who monitor these forums and give of their time to answer questions. Does anyone remember the original problem? Ha! I have come to terms with the fact that Motorola and Verizon will cave for no one. We were treated the way a customer should be treated at the old Altell store.....ahhh....the good old days.

Goodnight all!

Sally

Like we pointed out, there's no real solution to your original problem. That's how the update was and that's what changed. I bet there were people who didn't like the previous colors before this update, and were saying the exact same thing you did. It's all personal preference, and has nothing to do with customer service, as there really is nothing that can be done. You're speaking as if you're the only person whose opinion matters, when in fact there ARE those out there who prefer this color scheme to the one before.

Also, if you haven't noticed already, when you post on these forums, it turns into a completely different topic and most often a debate. 80% of the time the original post is completely forgotten.

droidsw

mortb wrote:
Read some of the messages on the other boards, such as the IPhone Forum. And in a lot of cases, it may be that the smartphone is smarter than the owner.

Really? Maybe the next time my X locks up, or somehow malfunctions at a very inconvenient moment, I will think to myself, "What an amazingly designed engineering marvel". Insead of "Man, I've got to rid of this piece of junk".

For the record, I don't think it is a piece of junk. That statement always humors me.

sallyshouse

Actually I marvel at what this phone can do every day of my life especially when I think back to hauling around a bag with a huge phone and being delighted to only pay about $80 a month for 30 minutes airtime!

I do not believe that my way of thinking is the ONLY way, I do, however, beleve in choices. If you had the vision problems I have and were told "tough luck" I don't think you would be too pleased either. I believe the one thing that I see too often lacking in program design is common sense. I am happy there are those that love the new GB, I just don't happen to be one of them. If you took a poll, I believe it would be split and not so much the majority absolutely loving it.

Just my two cents for a Wednesday morning...............enough said

keezy

sallyshouse wrote:
Actually I marvel at what this phone can do every day of my life especially when I think back to hauling around a bag with a huge phone and being delighted to only pay about $80 a month for 30 minutes airtime!

I do not believe that my way of thinking is the ONLY way, I do, however, beleve in choices. If you had the vision problems I have and were told "tough luck" I don't think you would be too pleased either. I believe the one thing that I see too often lacking in program design is common sense. I am happy there are those that love the new GB, I just don't happen to be one of them. If you took a poll, I believe it would be split and not so much the majority absolutely loving it.

Just my two cents for a Wednesday morning...............enough said

I know you've said you can't afford a new phone, but you should really check into some used phones on eBay or Craigslist or something like that. They've got some pretty affordable nice ones, and I'm sure you'd be able to find one whose color scheme you'd like better.

Or maybe, with vision problems, the Droid X would be a good choice (in your other post you mentioned you have the Droid 2, correct?) This thing feels like a laptop in my pocket, it's so big.

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