I ordered the Storm for $250 less my $100 trade in credit bringing it down to $150 less a $50 mail-in rebate. The phone arrived via FedEx 2 days later on a monday. I didn't get a chance to activate it until Wednesday. I use my contact list extensively and could not envision functioning without it. I went to the closest Verizon store and had the contacts moved over, got some tutorials on use, bought a bunch of accessories and I was on my way. Immediately I noticed that the voice command via bluetooth was stilted and fast. I would at times get a keyboard for no reason. The screen is not a "tap" with your fingernail touch screen it is a touch with your finger pad, look for a blue light, then press on the glass. The Glass depresses a tiny bit to activate your command. The keyboard was painful for me to use, I made lots of errors and to type ANY number using it you have to switch modes from ABC to 123 EVERY number you want to type. I wasn't feeling the love for this phone at all. However, for the first time I experienced almost real time updated email on my phone. NOw this rocked. Within a day I was listening for the "bahdeep" sound of "you've got mail".

I wanted this phone for personal use and since I sell on the web, many of those "badeeps" are "you've made a sale" messages. On day three with this phone I left early to get some quiet time work done and I tried to call home and the Bluetooth connection could not initialize. It had the device locked up for many minutes before giving up its efforts to work. I turned off and on my Jawbone, off and on the phone, but nothing helped. I then thought I would set up speed dial. This went horribly. THe dialing on the phone is so blazing fast that the Jawbone doesn't register and the call activates on the handset.

I called support and got a nice young man. He told me that unfortunately the Blackberry phones in general were not compatible with Bluetooth. That if you can get it to work, that's fine, but it is not guaranteed to keep working. We went on about some of the other features of the phone, some configuration options etc. But never got anywhere with the Bluetooth issues. I finished up with him and was still disgruntled. So I did my work and later called support again. This time I got a young lady who had never heard of that issue. She suggested a soft reset, which I did and the problem was resolved. However by now all the love for this phone was gone. I didn't look forward to random soft resets to make the phone work the way I need. I decided I would research phones myself on Saturday.

My husband felt bad and he too did more research on phones to replace the Storm. On Saturday morning I was putting all of my receipts and packaging together to bring in to the store when I started to wonder about the data fee. I had been paying $15/month for data with the 9900. Was I still only paying that for the Storm? hmmm. I called billing. They told me I was setup with the corporate data plan for 44.99/month. I was livid! I had told the sales person that I connected to yahoo email only. The billing department agreed to swap my data plan to the $29.99 plan. But, I was told that the $44.99 would be prorated for the days I used the plan (3 days) and that was just plain stupid. I argued with him and he tried something to back it all the way out and it worked. whew. We then talked about other phone options and he highly recommended the Samsung Omnia, a Windows mobile PDA. I did some comparisons of it to the storm and read reviews and the Omnia rated much higher than the Storm both from reviewers and users.

I went to the Verizon store. If you have not experienced a verizon store it is quite an operation. I got put in a queue for returns, but she didn't know the phones and had to get me to tech support and luckily he had owned a Storm for a month, and had just swapped to the Omnia 2 days before. He showed me all the features. We compared side by side, each phone and I made the decision to swap. He then got all serious and told me that yes you have 30 days to exchange the phone, but if you get something different you will incur a $35 restocking fee.

I said that I had technically only used the phone for 3 days and the phone didn't even do what I want to do correctly nor consistently. He said that the manager would decide but he wanted to give me a heads up. Grumble, snarl. Now I wasn't very pleased with Verizon's shenanigans, I had just been overcharged for my data package and now they wanted to charge $35 more? I got in the next line for "exchanges". I felt like I was at an amusement park, getting in line for the various rides, but so far the rides were decidedly NOT fun.

I got "called" up to the desk. We started our pleasantries. I was told about the restocking fee and I expressed my displeasure about the policy for invoking that fee. I expressed it firmly stating how the phone didn't work as advertised and I was setup with the wrong plan. Two stations down a fellow technician took pity on me and he looked up and printed a memo that had gone out 2 days prior stating that the $35 fee COULD be waived if the phone was deemed defective. That took care of that, the manager came out of his rabbit hole to approve the exchange with no fee and I was out from under the Storm. Now get this, the Omnia reviews had mentioned that the Omnia was "more" than the Store, so I was prepared to pay more, but it started at $199.99, less my $100 trade in credit, brough it down to $99.99. The Omnia has a $70 rebate right now so I got the phone for $30. HELLOOO! SWEET:D I couldn't argue with that. The data plan is still $29.99. I have had the Omnia for one evening and already it works FAR better than the storm. It is a familiar windows enviroment. The fingernail tap is comfortable for me. It comes with a stylus and an integrated optical mouse so when your fingers are tired you have 2 other ways to "drive". I will make a full report in another week.

As I reread this, I realize how bad Verizon must sound. All of their people are pleasant and encouraging. They try to be helpful and for the most part are. Verizon's service works very well in my region and my company has a corporate plan with them so I get a big discount. In the buildings at work the signal is strong because Verizon came and put in equipment to make it so. I have been with Verizon for over 10 years now and usually when i get a new phone it is no pain at all. I will forgive them this one time for their inadequacies and will move along with my Omnia:)