I’m on a quest to remove crapware from my Droid X, and while I haven’t figured it out exactly yet I wanted to post a little more information about programs like City ID.

See How To Remove City ID (and other crapware like Blockbuster, Skype and VZ Navigator) From Droid X (and other Android phones) for detailed instructions.

City ID is a product of Cequint, Inc., who have partnered with Verizon to cram it down our throats; along with other (cr)app that can’t be removed.  Just search for “remove city id” or “uninstall city id” and you’ll find millions of results – most of which are people (just like me) complaining about this crapware.  I especially liked this one, “How to remove City ID ???” on the Verizon Wireless community portal in which users are ripping Verizon, and all they had to say was, “Unfortunately you can not remove any of the apps pre-installed on your device. I apologize for the inconvenience. Hope this is helpful!”

No, it’s not helpful you dumb ass!  I want to be able to remove this crap from my phone!  And so do a lot of other people – just Google it.  I can’t imagine that any company would want this kind of negative publicity/feedback.  Just in case they aren’t aware I will be contacting each of the persons listed below at Cequint to let them know of my displeasure about this situation.  And, I certainly hope they have decided this isn’t worth the outrage and they won’t continue their agreement with Verizon.

Since it seems these thousands of complaints are falling on deaf ears at Verizon I’m going to contact principles at companies like Cequint, Inc.  I found this list of corporate officers from the Washington secretary of state:

Cequint, Inc. Governing Persons

• Rick Hennessey, President
• Robert Hart, Chairman
• Scott Weller, Vice President
• Mark Gosselin, Vice President
• John Carleton, Director
• Nimesh Patel, Director
• Scott Frodle, Secretary

It appears that in September of 2010 Cequint was acquired by Transaction Network Services.  Looks like I’ll be contacting them too. . .

Open letter to Rick Hennessey, President of Cequint, Inc., the company that produced City ID and partnered with Verizon to cram it down my throat:

Dear Mr. Hennessey,

Several months ago I purchased a Motorola Droid X on the Verizon network.  All in all it’s been a great phone and I’m very happy with it.  However, I am very displeased with the fact that a number of (cr)apps bundled with the phone cannot be removed one of which, City ID, is from your company.

I sincerely hope this tactic of forcing junkware on mobile phones that cannot easily be uninstalled is backfiring for you.  I for one will never use a product produced by your company or your parent company.  I will also spread the word to anyone who will listen not to use products from your company.  In fact, this message has been posted to my blog which receives a significant amount of traffic.

I’m sure you are aware that this tactic is not very popular.  A simple Internet search of “uninstall city id,” or “remove city id” produces thousands of results, most of which are asking how to remove this and other unwanted programs, and complaining about how it got there and that it cannot be removed. 

I have filed a complaint with the FCC naming your company and Verizon as purveyors of junk who use unethical tactics to force unwanted applications on users of Verizon phones which cannot be removed by me, the owner of the phone.  If negative publicity doesn’t get your attention hopefully the FCC will pursue this on my behalf. 

I certainly hope you consider this feedback and cease strong-arm tactics like this. 

Sincerely,

Someone who will NEVER be your customer! 

I sent the above message to the four published Cequint email addresses (above) with the subject, “Please forward to Rick Hennessey and any other exec who cares about your company image.”  I’ll post any responses here.