Earlier this week, I became the proud owner of a BlackBerry Pearl. I researched it online beforehand, so I was aware of the potentially short battery life and possible issues synching with Microsof Outlook (which I don't use, so I don't care about). But when the Verizon guy mentioned that I can hook the BlackBerry up to my laptop and use it to get a wireless signal in places that otherwise wouldn't have wireless, I was in heaven. How did I miss this during my online research? That alone practically justifies the monthly data fee! (Thanks to a generous rebate, the phone was practically free.)
When I got home and managed to configure Gmail access by myself, I was feeling pretty good. Tech Godness Good. But wait... There's a catch. Somehow nobody told me (and I distinctly remember mentioning Gmail when I was in the store) that every time you send a Gmail message from your BlackBerry or your laptop, your BlackBerry will think it's an incoming message and will include it in your new messages. Which is très annoying if you're someone like me who sends fifty million emails a day.
A quick search uncovered a seemingly simple solution, but I couldn't log into the BlackBerry website because it thought there was an existing account attached to my phone (my guess is someone returned my BlackBerry to the store). An hour and a half call with tech support finally fixed this problem.
I spent the first hour on the phone convincing the tech support person that "yes, I did in fact purchase my phone from a Verizon store" and "no, I do not have an existing account with BlackBerry, at least not to my knowledge." Then I had to re-explain the Gmail issue and convince him that it IS a problem to get all of these emails I wrote showing up as duplicates in my inbox. Isn't the purpose of a BlackBerry so that you can keep up with email instead of spending more time wading through it? Fortunately, we were eventually able to establish that we needed to override the existing account to create a new one.
He was perfectly nice and patient (as I tried to be), but I'm almost positive he had never used a BlackBerry before either. The man did not know how to rearrange icons! "Gee, I don't think you can do that." Thirty minutes into our discussion, it finally clicked that this was actually a Gmail issue and not a figment of my overactive imagination.
This morning I discovered that the deleted and read items from Gmail box are not synching with my BlackBerry (yes, the box for synching messages is checked). That means that even after I delete an email from my mailbox, it still shows up in my BlackBerry. I followed all of the instructions on Gmail's BlackBerry help page, and it STILL doesn't work. Anyone have other suggestions so I can avoid another lengthy call with tech support?
I guess the moral of the story is twofold:
- Gmail and a BlackBerry is a clumsy combination.
- Trouble-shooting BlackBerry issues with phone support is like trying to learn watercolor painting from audio tapes. You're better off learning by doing!