I stopped by the Northwoods Mall Verizon company store, the one with
the full cheater repeater in the ceiling to provide amazing signals to
even the cheap phones to get a demo of the V60p PTT phone on Labor Day
at 4PM in the very offpeak conditions, today.

I found the demo V60p and picked it up. Of course, the display said
"LOW BATTERY", instead of Verizon Wireless or the time, warning me I
was too late. A salesman approached, dressed for a funeral, and asked
if he could help me. (Maybe he thought I was gonna steal it...??)
"I'd like to see a demo of the new PTT to see if it will work for
me.", I patiently said. He started talking to me as if I were a
12-year-old and he was going to teach me how to use the water
fountain. I played along, acting as stupid as he thought I was,
asking him lots of questions like:
"How long does it take to start talking to the person I'm calling?"
A - Just a few seconds
"How long do I have to wait before I can start talking and how do I
know when it's time for me to talk?"
A - It's instantaneous and it beeps to tell you like Nextel....
"Do I stay connected until I'm done talking or how do I disconnect?"
A - It stays connected until you disconnect it. Press END.
"Does this count against my M2M minutes?"
A - I don't think so....

"Can you call someone so I can see it work?"

At this point, he showed me the button on the side of this thick phone
they tried to hide by painting it black. Man, that battery should
crank a diesel! (I didn't say that to him. I tried to remain
mystified as any naive customer would without usenet's input.)

The dead phone, of course, wouldn't connect to anything. It's battery
was dead, idiot! So, he put me on hold and walked back into Inner
Sanctum and borrowed a red phone from one of the honchos who hide in
the back. I heard a woman's voice, but couldn't make out quite what
she said to him. He wasn't happy, whatever she said, from the look on
his face.

The red phone had several Verizon stores programmed into it, must be
other demo phones they leave online haphazardly like the one with the
dead battery. He called the mall across town by pushing the button
and started to talk as if he had a Family Radio Service UHF walkie
talkie in his hand. I started timing for the connect tones in my
head, trying to not let him know I was timing it as he made a fool of
himself. (Don't they TRAIN ANYONE TO SELL THIS CRAP?!)

During his 3rd "Can you hear me now?" try with the button down, about
14 seconds after he pressed the button, the connect beeps happened.
14 seconds to get a connect across town on a holiday during low usage
hours standing directly under a full-scale store repeater with a big
antenna on the roof? Not impressive. (Nextel users - STOP LAUGHING!)

After he saw his mistake and the phone display read CONNECTED, he
called out, again, to see if anyone were near the phone. I timed the
response, about 4 seconds, and chalked it up to someone walking across
the floor the FIRST time. Of course, the saleslady on the other end
in the other mall had the same extensive training as my salesman, so
we only heard the last two words of her transmission because she
didn't wait for the beep-beep, either. My guy keys up and starts
talking immediately, then FOUR SECONDS later the phone beeps and
starts transmitting the last few words of his speech. Easily over 3
seconds after he unkeys, we start hearing her already-started reply
breaking the squelch in the middle of a word. "Shouldn't we wait for
the beep like Nextel users do?", I asked, trying not to look too
bright. "No, the phone sends instantaneously.", he insisted, again
quoting from the extensive training seminar he'd spent days attending,
obviously.

At that point I asked if I could talk to her, or try to talk to her,
and I got more extensive PTT training to the elementary school class.
Obviously, he was far superior to me. After all, he was in a funeral
suit, wasn't he?

My 20 second training period had diverted his attention from keying up
the phone so the phone had DISCONNECTED the call, of course, just like
was reported in a.c.verizon earlier. By the time I got the phone, the
call had been terminated. I keyed up the call and 12 seconds later I
got a reconnect beep set indicating I could talk to her again. I
asked him why it had disconnected and he LIED THROUGH HIS TEETH
telling me he had disconnected the call. "How do you disconnect?
Which button do I press to disconnect?", I asked, looking carefully at
the phone's display for a button assignment. Of course, he KNEW it
was a lie, so we started to become more defensive. I kept my cool and
asked which button, again. "I must have pressed the wrong button.",
he replied, finally. Nonsense. I'm standing right in front of him
and he didn't press anything. We'd waited the 15 seconds and the
phone disconnected to free up the system for the next sucker. I was
holding it asking these stupid questions when it disconnected AGAIN.
"Look, it disconnected me and I didn't touch anything!", I complained
RESPECTFULLY, still.....

I connected it back in 14 more seconds, waiting for the beeps and
said, "Hello, this is Larry. I want to see how this phone works to
see if I want one. Can you hear me now?" (I REALLY tried not to mock
the commercial, but at this point I just COULDN'T help myself,
really!) Again, she was already talking coming back to my call and,
turning away from my condescending, superior instructor who had not
come out from behind the counter, I walked a little ways away and
asked her to wait for the beeps before starting to talk to me so we
could really try it out. Man can he MOVE when he's lost control of
the demo! I thought he was gonna rip the door off the hinges on the
end of the counter!

By that time, I had already gotten a good reply from her and had
gotten another beep to talk on my end....Time is about 3-4 seconds,
but one time it was only about 2 seconds after pressing the button.
DAMMIT, NEXTEL CUSTOMERS, I ASKED YOU NOT TO LAUGH! Now STOP
IT!...(c;

Well, by the time he'd got to me, I simply handed the phone back to
him and told him I didn't think this service would be of any use to me
as I could call the person much easier without all the delays and
disconnects. "I don't think this will work for me. Thank you for the
demonstration.", I said into the phone to the woman in the other mall
across town, while looking at him trying to grab the phone.

I thanked him, again, for his time as I handed over the red V60p.

No thanks. It's just not Nextel.

None of the Alltel or Sprint dealers could tell me when PTT will be
available from them. One Alltel reseller had a V60p but said he
didn't know how it worked because he didn't have one to try it out. I
told him that was alright. The Verizon salesmen didn't know how it
worked, either......

Ok, NOW you can all laugh.....



Larry W4CSC

Isn't it becoming more practical by the day to make
Iraq's desert the new World Nuclear Waste Disposal Site?