Man, and I thought Verizon could be sticklers about charging you for almost every single penny they possibly could.  How would you feel if you were a Canadian man, lonely in your job testing oil and natural gas wells alone, and you wake up to find a cell phone bill charging you a not-so-pleasant $85,000?

Yeah.  Me too.  Too bad this all really happened to Piotr Staniaszek in Canada.  Basically here’s what went down:  He was bored, lonely and Alone so he used his phone as a modem, thinking that browsing the internet was all part of the $10/month unlimited browser plan he signed up for.  The bad news came fast as he racked up hours and hours of internet time downloading movies and music and an assortment of other files.  Then came the bill.

Yeah, apparently it’s pretty clear in the contract that those are Not free activities and he WILL be paying for them.  Lucky for him, Bell, the company in question, agreed to reduce the charge down to a little over $3000, but he plans on fighting that as well.

Bottom line friends, read the fine print.  Please.  All true mobile warriors know that, unfortunately, the youth of America (myself very included) don’t always do so.  Hey, who can blame us, we’re the MTV Generation after all.

Share This

I’ve had a lot of emails in past weeks about support questions. As I work to respond personally to each one, it seems a very opportune time to remind our wonderful customers and readers of MoGo support lines.

The FAQ, which has answers to all the most commonly asked MoGo product questions, is HERE.

In the  United States and Canada, the phone number for MoGo support is (800) 945.9122.

In Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,  the number is +31 (0)55 538 4325.

MoGo also has online videos with instructions on installing, setting up and configuring their products HERE.

Share This

Before embarking on last month’s road trip, we purchased a TomTom global navigation system.

For the past decade, the bulk of my trips have been the fly/rental car variety. Increasingly in the past years, my cars have come equipped with a GPS.

There are few things I hate more than those tiny place-mat maps the Airport car rental places give you.

The only place they have ever successfully steered me is into the freight hangars.

So I took to GPS like a duck to cool, deep puddle and planned on making sure the next car we buy has it factory-installed.

But a portable after-market system in the meantime? Seemed like an unnecessary luxury in this Mapquest world.

Then, the day before embarking on my 10,000-mile boondoggle, my husband came home with a TomTom. Like an adult, I squealed and hopped around the driveway.

The portable system ran us about $300. We chose it over the integrated option with my husband’s Blackberry because, well, I’m the one that does most of the getting lost in this relationship.

The installation was a matter of attaching a suction cup.

With John Cleese telling us to ‘turn left NOW’, off we stepped.

It never occurred to us to check if it would work in Canada. No worries, even in the most rural bits of northern New Brunswick the device knew where to go.

The multiple-stop planning option was outstanding. We were able to integrate all the destinations - client sites, hotels, desired detours - it a single plan. The estimated travel times and on-the-fly recalculations were about 90% correct. Huge improvement over the other systems I’ve used (perhaps a simple matter of the algorithm getting smarter) and Mapquest.

In sum, the gadget steered us faithfully  except for some spells where the satellite signal was not available. The maps clear, construction and traffic avoided, and John’s sardonic wit occasionally shining through the basic ‘go here go there’ dialogue. By the end of the trip, we were ‘instrument driving’ - relying on TomTom  instead of looking out for upcoming exits or traffic.

The only improvement to our experience (excepting stronger satellites) would have been if we’d paired it with a Bluetooth headset like the one MoGo is rolling out. There were long stretches when it would have been nice to route the sound only to the driver’s ears.

Otherwise, I can heartily recommend this as a Father’s Day gift or just a regular Thursday purchase.

Share This