Peek Speaks
Peek is simply email. This blog is simply Peek.

Our favorite gadgets…for you! The 12 Days of Peekmas

12 Days of Peekmas

Deck yourself out in Peeky goodness

Get messenger icons, wallpapers, twitter links, etc etc.

Can’t I just pay, like, $10 extra and get….?

People sometimes say to us, “hey, I can get a smartphone for like $10/15/20/25/30 extra per month!”

We’ve written about the ways cell phone companies play gotcha before.

Here is somebody’s real iPhone bill from AT&T. You know how you read about “oh it’s only like $70/month…” Well, this is how much it is really ($94.50 per month):

Ryan Block who is one of the masters of the tech blog universe wrote a blog entry just a couple of weeks back about when he got his new phone; it’s called “How hidden charges doubled my iPhone bill“.

Or, here is the New York Times reviewer’s take on his first iPhone bill:

It’s a staggeringly, hatefully complex document, designed by some Monty Pythoneseque committee in charge of consumer confusion.

For starters, although I signed up for what iTunes told me was a $60 plan (450 minutes, unlimited Internet), the bill says I have a $40 voice plan and a $20 Internet plan, and lists them on separate pages.

The first bill, believe it or not, comes to $150. It’s filled with unexplained services and features that were never mentioned during the signup process, like MEDIA MAX, EXPD M2M, VOICE PRIVACY, and AT&T DIRECT BILL.

Hey, we’re not picking on the iPhone, by the way. (If we wanted to do that we’d link to all these 300-page, $500 bills: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

All the carriers and all the smartphones are about the same!

We did some of our own experiments a while back. We searched and search and snuck onto a secret carrier plan that they don’t even advertise or offer any more (we tried to re-order it last week, and it had gone up by $10). But the plan was really unique: we bought our own smartphone devices off of Ebay so we wouldn’t have to sign a contract, we found a plan we could add to it that would not require a new contract and that would come with zero voice minutes — the minimalist possible plan! We searched and searched and only one of the four big carriers had such a plan, but we got it.

We got a Sidekick “unlimited” plan for $29.99/month and a Blackberry “unlimited” plan for $29.99/month…and they both keep coming to us each month as $37.57. Hmm….

Top 10 14 cell phone company gotchas

Consumer Reports has their own top ten

Oh man. Where to start?

Well, we thought we would do a post about cell phone companies, because they are normally the place you have to go to get mobile email.

Want an iPhone? Go to the AT&T store. Want a Blackberry? Go to Verizon. Etc.

Well, there are some, ahem, gotchas when you go to the cell phone store.

10. Contracts. 1-year, 2-year, 3-year. We hate them all. This is the most obvious one right? You have to sign a contract to deal with cell phone companies. Change plan? Contract extension. Broken phone? Contract. Fix a device? Contract. Peek has no contracts.

9. Contracts, or else. Huge deposits needed if you have poor credit history. Large sums of money required to get out of a contract. You are tied into a rate even when better plans are available. Peek has no such thing.

8. Rebates. Those low prices for the slick such-and-such 8000zx look great. You’re paying $300 up-front, but you’re going to get $200 of that back immediately, right? Wrong. Instead you have to submit a rebate form xeroxed in triplicate, wait 3 weeks for it to arrive, 50% of the time you are denied because of some technicality (they call it “breakage” and build it into their marketing plans), and even then you have a lame pre-credited debit card that you can NEVER use completely… bah! Peek: fuggedaboutit.

7. Activation fees. $35 per line. Mentioned only in tiny print at the bottom of the “FREE FREE FREE!!!” advertisements. Not so with Peek.

6. Extra charges and fees. The advertisement says $49.99. My bill says $57.62….what gives? Peek? A rose is a rose is a rose.

5. Your number. Say you decide, maybe I will go for that nifty new plan from Carrier X with that jazzy new SuperDuperMatic phone. But, oh wait, I would like to keep my number. Easy right? Check “yes”. Later the next night, as you are banging your fist on the kitchen counter as the hold music plays on and on, you think…“Peek doesn’t want your number.”

4. Bills. True story: I love receiving my cell phone bill. Every month when it arrives in the mail, I settle down into my favorite reading chair, with a glass of small-batch pinot, and pore over my 29 page bill. Fascinating reading. Not!! (Do people still say that? Peek still says Not!!, especially to bills.)

3. “A la carte” billing. They charge separately for Picture Mail, Text Messaging, Multimedia Messaging, Unlimited Data, Mobile Email, Ringtones, Downloads, etc. Plus certain plans say that they include this feature and that feature however if you dont have to right kind of phone it will charge you extra to use the feature even though it says that its included. Oh yeah, and they have monthly charges for device insurance…and still charge you a hefty fee if the phone malfunctions (i.e., a $50 deductible). Peek? Not so much.

2. Misleading bargains. Like, they say its free after 7 but if you get a call at 6:59 and it last for 30 minutes, it uses 31 of your minutes instead of using 1 minute and being free after 7. Does that even make any sense? Not to Peek.

OK, so we’re going to have to work hard to squeeze these in.

1.75 Overage. They have ridiculous overage fees of more than 40 cents per minute…with a $40 per month plan for 450 minutes, go over by 50 minutes and you owe an extra $20. Peek likes unlimited. As in, un-limited.

1.5 Bills again. They make no sense. Peek has no bills!

1.25 $$$ over customers. They gladly put you on a plan that does not benefit you.

1.1 Customer service. Entering or saying your phone number 5 times, going through 5 sets of menu selections, waiting on hold for at least 5 minutes, explaining your issue 3x to the first agent, to be transferred a few more times, finally talking to someone who is unable to help you! Or, gives you different information than the last time you called! The first person you talk to at Peek will be able to help you.

And…..

1. Sales reps! Those really cocky guys with the hip holsters and golf shirts who resemble used car dealers who want you to believe that none of the above is true… There’s always Peek instead….

Your phone doesn’t even have javascript???

Some of those tech bloggers who’ve been “helping us out” with their ideas kind of remind me of this friendly guy from the 90’s…

What’s in your bag?

When you hang out with “industry” people too much, you start to think like them. As we started to create Peek a while back, we found ourselves around a lot of mobile industry people. And there was a lot of pressure to start thinking like them.

One of the big ways “they” think is like this: mobile phones are these great little computers and we just can’t wait till you can do everything on them from call your friends to book airline tickets to write term papers to watch TV to exercise more to…. In fact, why would you ever need anything besides a mobile phone? And who in their right mind would want to carry anything at all besides their phone?

Well, maybe that’s putting it a bit strong. But we have had to listen to a lot of such people along the way.

“It’s all converging. One device will do everything…as soon as the next such-and-such comes out.”

Indeed, there are lots of pretty impressive smartphones out there. But one thing we just can’t get over: nobody carries “just one thing.” We’ve been noticing it for years — going to business meetings and seeing people with PDAs and email devices and cell phones on the conference table; hanging out with friends and seeing them whip out point-and-shoot digital cameras, handheld game players, and a flip cell phone.

We surveyed about 1000 people and found that of the people with smartphones, 45% of them have two cell phones. Rubicon Consulting did a study that found a third of iPhone users carry two phones.

The data got us thinking. And looking around.

Some people have a lot of stuff! Which made us think — despite all this convergence talk for the last ten years, there have a been a series of really huge and successful products: more than 100 million mp3 players out there; game players like the Nintendo DS (which has sold more than 75 million units) are among the most successful products ever; pocket digital cameras are rocking along faster than ever; personal navigation devices are growing at triple digit rates; and check out the point-and-shoot video cameras cropping up everywhere!

The picture above is pretty extreme, but here is something totally real world: a bag from really close to home (mine) with a bunch of things in it (a phone, a PDA, a mirror, keys, sunglasses, a USB key, a Target gift card, etc. etc. etc.)

Through the magic of the Internet, there are just tons of other folks that were kind enough to provide us with a little market research with their what’s in your bag group on Flickr. Check these out for yourself:

http://flickr.com/photos/smokingpermitted/6781495/

http://flickr.com/photos/electrichamster/1954690088/

The vast majority of regular people carry various stuff for various occasions — and we think mobile email fits that mold. Carry it when you are running errands, leave it behind when you head out on Friday night.

So if you need a swiss army knife, Peek isn’t for you. If you want something that’s totally easy and great at what it does — say hello to Peek!