REVIEW: A good idea, but YouGetItBack needs to pay attention to details

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Yay or Nay. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us atrcrwebhelp@crain.com.
Application: YouGetItBack.com
Running on: BlackBerry Pearl 8130 for T-Mobile USA
Yay: We appreciate YouGetItBack.com’s wonderful concept and easy-to-set-up application.
Nay: YouGetItBack is an exciting service and has the potential to put us at ease. However, it seems as though there are a few technical glitches to work though. Also, YouGetItBack only works with smartphones at this point. Finally, it isn’t free.
We say: Knock out those kinks, and YouGetItBack.com is a great service that could save customers worry when a phone is misplaced, especially one with valuable and/or personal information.
Review: We’ve all felt that gut-wrenching feeling of, ‘Oh, where is my phone?’ Everyone has lost or will eventually misplace their cellphone. Despite the fact that we spend hundreds of dollars on these devices and may feel lost without them, we can still lose them. And chances are, there’s probably some valuable information on that phone, whether it’s personal photos, work e-mail or even confidential documents.
Enter YouGetItBack.com, which came up with a nifty solution to help locate a lost phone, or at least protect the information on it.
The process is fairly simple. YouGetItBack is a downloadable application you connect to via the company’s desktop Web site. Once you log in to the Web site, you’ll receive a text message with a confirmation number – and then your phone is protected.
So how does it work? Well, if you ever lose you phone you can go onto the site’s “My Vault” section, where you can lock and/or unlock the phone. Both of these tools worked properly when tested.
There is also a location tool that, on devices with GPS capabilities, will display on a map the exact location of your phone. At least, that’s how it’s promoted. We deliberately left our trial phone in different locations and when we went to the site, we could lock the phone, but when we clicked on the location tab, an error message always appeared. This may be frustrating to someone who purchased this product in hopes of recovering their device. On that note, the non-free service costs $30 as a one-time payment or $3 a month.
Once inside “My Vault,” a user can implement settings for the device so it automatically locks during certain situations. For example, the device can be automatically locked after a period of inactivity, if a certain number is dialed or if it is used in a different country. Once locked, a screen pops up with the YouGetItBack logo, the company’s Web site and a message that says press 0 to return this phone. When the zero key is pressed, four options appear: Unlock, Report Found, Emergency Call and Help.
The unlock button is supposed to let phone owners unlock their device with a 4-digit pin created with the YouGetItBack account. However, we could not get this feature to work. We had to log on to the Web site to unlock our device.
Further, we set the phone to automatically lock up after five minutes of idleness, and found this service also didn’t work. We used the free-week trial, so there’s a chance that many of these kinks and errors could be sifted out once purchased, but that might not be a chance some are willing to take.
YouGetItBack is a great service and it does fundamentally work. We were able to lock our phone and unlock it whenever we wanted. There are a few services that need to be worked on, but overall we find it to be a good product with great potential if all elements are working – because paying $30 to locate you device, protect it and even get it returned is much cheaper than forking over the cash for a new device completely.