A visit to Nokia Care.

2009 June 8 at 14:32 » Tagged as :lame, sqlite,

As you know, I have an E71 with a dead camera, which is apparently a known issue in many Series 60 phones (but something which Nokia does not wish to acknowledge as such). This phone was purchased in the US and as a result there is a problem with claiming the warranty from Sri Lanka (their official policy doesn't allow it (lame)). After several emails, Nokia finally agreed to allow the warranty claim from Sri Lanka and I visited the Nokia Care center in Colombo today. If not for the airconditioned atmosphere and comfortable seats in the waiting area, I might have mistaken it for a government office.

It's a good thing the seats have to be comfortable because you have to wait. You have to get a token and wait for them to call your number. I waited for nearly half and hour before finally calling it quits the number progressed by only 4 during that time and there was two more to go before my number was to be called. All that waiting is just to hand over the phone to the agent  at the counter. He will then look at it, ask a few questions and send it to the backroom. You have to wait again until the backroom boys take a look and get back with their comments. All in all the process seems to take about two hours. To make matters worse, there are eight counters but only six of them were staffed. This sort of thing has become a standard practice in Sri Lanka no one seems to realize that time is money.

Later, the phone was sent back to Nokia Care with someone who was prepared to spend two hours there. Now it's in their hands let's see how it goes. As a footnote, it must be mentioned that Amazon really is a customer-centric company. They readily agreed to refund the money but we chose to get the phone fixed instead of sending it back because sending it back wasn't practical.