It’s no real wonder that people have problems with telcos…

One Telus rep tells me in no uncertain terms that they don’t support GPS and that it’s Rim’s fault that there’s no GPS and that I can feel free to call Rim and complain to them. Rep ignores the fact that there’s a big “GPS” logo on the packaging, and the collateral handed out in the store says “GPS Stand-alone GPS: Preloaded with BlackBerry Maps. Assisted GPS: TELUS Navigator available for a monthly fee.” All of this is apparently completely out of the control of Telus.

According to this rep, they just put the letters GPS on there to tell about things I could do if they had GPS in the phone, but they don’t so I can’t. I don’t follow her logic, but if she’s telling the truth, I’ve been lied to, so I want to speak to the loyalty people about this.

She won’t transfer me because she doesn’t have a valid reason to transfer me and blah blah blah, she keeps talking over me and being generally unpleasant, so I say “Fine, I’ll just hang up and call back to them myself.”

The guy in loyalty didn’t seem to understand what GPS was either, but that’s not really his job, so I’m okay with that. He says he can’t pull up info on who last accessed my file either, so the horrible customer ‘service’ woman gets away… He goes off to check with his technical people, and gets some information, but only about Telus Navigator which is the pay service for $10 a month which gives turn-by-turn GPS voice navigation.

I give up on that route, and send an email to Telus customer care, because they should have some time to decipher my request, look up information, and get back to me.

They send me a real winner of a response.

“It is important to understand that the TELUS version of the BlackBerry Storm is manufactured to reflect the technology used by our network. TELUS does not have a GPS network.

We recommend that you call into our BlackBerry Support Team for further assistance. They can be reached at 1 866 771 7292.”

The network of satellites used in GPS isn’t specific to any one application, handset, or phone network. It’s likely futile to respond to an email from a group like that, but what the heck…

I’m not really sure that the person who addressed my question understands what GPS is. It isn’t a cellular phone technology or something peculiar to any particular compant. Neither Rogers nor Bell have GPS networks either, per se. They do however offer GPS based location services.

It might be interesting for you to familiarize yourself with the specs of the phones. For example, the Storm spec sheet handed out in stores advertises the built in GPS functionality.

Thanks for the phone number though, they were able to answer questions I had.

I’ve had this sort of poor support on other networks, and when dealing with much larger systems than cell phones. Is it any wonder that people hate contacting support?

I contacted the Telus BlackBerry support people, and they were fully aware of there being both GPS and aGPS in the Storm. Shocking. Trouble is that there’s apparently problems with the software when Telus has locked out the GPS functionality from free apps a little bit TOO well, so BB Maps can’t even connect to satellites.

I might have to go ahead and do the GPS unlock hack after all.