The other day I turned on my TV and saw an awesome commercial of Nexus One. It was mind blowing. They showed all the new features of this amazing device and I was in a complete shock. Oh wait none of that actually happened. It was a dream. Google never aired any commercials marketing Nexus One. Maybe Google marketing thought that the Google name will make users buy the new Nexus One. Sorry Google you are the new kid on the block and you need to make good entrance. Google phone launch reminded me of my visit to the zoo to see grizzly bears in the winter season. I stood there all day and none of the bears came out. I guess they were all hibernating. Just like that I watched the TV all day but all I saw was a bleach commercial in which some guy was trying to get the blood off his shirt.
To be honest I am not saying the actual device is bad. I have played around with Nexus One and it is a pretty decent device. And no it is not IPhone killer! So, anyway let's see what went wrong. The first thing that was totally fked up was when Google decided that they are going to sell the phone themselves. This idea stank more than a monkey pulling a banana right out of his ass. Now, there are thousand of customers who are lost in the Bermuda triangle between Google, T-Mobile and HTC.
Google customer service is a bunch of whack jobs who are simply pasting automated answers on the message board. Talking about message board where the hell is the link to the message board. If you search for "Google Nexus Phone Forum" you are shown several results which all take you to the wrong forum. Check out the screenshot below which shows the search results for term "Nexus One Forum".
After clicking thousands of links I finally found out the official forum. Here is the link:
Google Nexus Official Forum
Another problem is for T-Mobile existing account holders. If you have a family account with T-Mobile then you cannot get Nexus One unless you pay the full price. I have heard that one way to get around this hurdle is to ask the T-Mobile representative to break the family plan into individual plan and purchase the phone and then again switch back to the family plan. Make sure you keep the representative on the phone at all times. And if that does not work don't blame me because I have just read about it and not tried \it myself.
Let's continue with the rant! I have a T-Mobile account and I qualify for an upgrade which means I can get the phone at $279 through Google. But guess what Google does not recognize that I qualify for an upgrade and denies it. I think Google has the following code written behind the modules that check for upgrade qualifications.
public bool DoesUserQualityForAnUpgrade()
{
return false;
}
You get the picture right!
Now, if you are a new T-Mobile customer then you will be welcomed with a lower price of $180 dollars for your Nexus One device. Of course you need to commit for a 2 year contract with T-Mobile. Now, let's say that you don't like T-Mobile service and want to cancel the contract then Google will jump on you like a Hyena jumps on the left over of a deer. Oh yeah! Google is back to suck on the remains. T-Mobile charges $200 to break their contract but even worse Google charges $350 for something they call "Equipment Recovery Fee". That is a total of $550 out of your pocket. Actually if you look carefully then you will find out that "Equipment Recovery Fee" charged by Google is pretty decent. This fee is used to contact Eric Schmidt over a video phone and generously ask him to show the middle finger to the user. As, you know Eric is a busy man and it takes a lot of effort to get this procedure completed.
I wonder if there is a problem with the phone whom you should call. Should you call Google or HTC or maybe T-Mobile? I don't know. Seems like you are stuck threesome between the companies and not getting lucky.
So, the question still floats "Who killed Nexus One?" I think it was a mixture of three things.
1) Bad Marketing
2) Bad Customer Service
3) Greed
What do you think?