Tone's Notes

On two different phones I get the same bizarre sound effect when initiating and ending calls.

It’s volume appears to be tied to the non-phone volume level. I’d describe it as kind of a strangled “bing” noise. Sounds very much like a “cosmetic” bug no-one could fix before the release date.

Anyone find a way to squelch it?

Larry Fish, CEO & Chairman Citizens Financial Group

One Citizens Plaza

RDC 575

Riverside, RI 02915

Dear Larry:

I’m writing to you today out of hope that perhaps you are unaware of how frustrated at least one of your new customers has become after transferring my accounts from Bank of America to Citizens Bank.

Integration between my personal checking account and Quicken is a critical feature for me. After confirming that this service was offered by Citizens, and hearing good things about how the bank treats its customers, in November of 2005 I opened a personal checking account and purchased a $5,000 CD to offset monthly fees. While Quicken integration wasn’t simple to set up, I was fully connected to my new account within a few days and happy.

In December, my local Hudson, MA branch office convinced me to add a business checking account with a promise that it would also provide Quicken integration at no additional monthly fee. That was the last time I have been able to access either account from Quicken.

With the help of many technical support reps, among whom Lori Evans and Steve Schonberger were most helpful, the problem was finally traced to the unique file assigned to my tax ID within your bank’s data center that had acquired an invalid property setting which could now not be changed without a software fix.

I have been tracking case number 25955 through your technical support department for several months now. There has been no action to solve the problem. The problem has not even been assigned a priority. I’m told that the bank is far more interested in their customers who make use of the Bank’s own web site than it is in customers using Quicken or Microsoft Money, and that your CIO has made the priority call to ignore “PFM” issues for the time being.

In addition to mailing this letter to you today by first class mail, I am also posting it to the web so that other potential customers can be made aware of your bank’s priorities. It can be found at http://tonesnotes.org/2006/02/22/citizens-bank-priorities. I will be happy to append any reply I receive from you to that posting as well as any resolution to the problem that may occur.

For future reference, a source of excellent one liners: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Alfred_North_Whitehead

Issues with the phone:

1.      The backlight doesn’t shut off when Windows Media is playing music.

2.      There’s no way to undo changes before they get synced back to the Exchange server. It would be nice if there was a quick way to say: I want to review each sync action the next time you sync.

3.      Using voice recognition is obscure. The best documentation I’ve found is the voice response help messages.

4.      Loading web pages can hang the system and make music playing stop and skip. The browser doesn’t know its own limits.

5.      Haven’t found a way of telling Windows Media to always put files in a storage card folder.

6.      Synchronizing music and pictures seems to be lacking enough control to cover compression format, source location and destination location. I’ve tried both Windows Media 10 and MusicMatch 10. Resorted to manually dragging stuff over via the file system.

7.      Clicking battery icon doesn’t bring up power screen.

8.      Clicking time in title bar doesn’t bring up clock/alarm screen. It brings up date and next appointment and a small battery icon.

9.      When entering text on keypad, auto-completion suggestion appear but I haven’t found a quick way to accept a suggestion without shifting my hands up to click on the touch screen, which takes at least as long as it would to complete the word on the keypad.

10.  The documentation does a bad job of identifying the option key early in the orientation process.

11.  Makes funny noise when placing a call.

12.  Battery runs down very quickly sometimes. Keeping an eye on what’s running when the phone is “idle” and on the ActiveSync scheduling frequency.

13.  Audio doesn’t switch reliably to a BlueTooth HS850 or H700 headset when the headset is turned on during a call.

14.  The function of the lower button on the left side is un-clear. It can be assigned a number of pre-defined functions but seems poorly integrated.

15.  There’s no easy way to make a voice recording of more than a few minutes. A note can include an audio recording, but only of short duration.

16.  It takes a really long time for the camera application to become active and for a new picture to be saved so that another picture can be taken. This is most likely a hard limitation of the speed of data compression and storage.

17.  The mute switch lacks any positive sensory feedback to let you know which state your in. Hard to operate in a dark environment.

18.  There’s no “select all” in the e-mail message editor. Replying to an e-mail includes the original message with no easy way to delete or avoid it. Shift-clicking and shift-scrolling don’t extend the current selection.

19.  ActiveSync. Lot’s of issues on the user forums. Caused me to hard reset twice. Gets wedged with no indication what the problem is and no way to recover.

20.  There’s no voice record button.

21.  There’s no way to voice dial a number from a headset.