HELP!!!! NOKIA Customer Service Bites!!!&#

[JSngry]

Long story short - my daughter has a Nokia N-900 that suffered water damage & now needs the SIM-card reader replaced. She sends it to Nokia's own service center for repair. They send the phone back to her saying that they can't fix it b/c water damage voids the warranty. Well, Duh. They say that a 3rd-party service center will have to repair it. All of them inspect the phone, diagnose the problem, and send the phone back saying that they can't get that part, only Nokia has it. The phone goes back to Nokia, who says that they can't fix it, to send it to a 3rd party service center will have to repair it. We (yeah, oit's reached "we" status now...) tell Nokia that no, that's not a solution, and they say that they can't fix it b/c the part is "unavailable". Apparently the parts are held under armed guard for use only in manufacturing, none for repair. NO PARTS FOR YOU!!! Or something. We were told by the last CS person with whom we spoke - a totally impotent little man (in character anyway) named Jacob, that he was the highest level available for public outreach, that we could not - WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO - reach anybody else.

These guys obviously suck donkey dix with both glee and abandon. We've made it very clear that we are willing to pay for repair. WE WILL GIVE THEM MONEY!!! They don't want our money, or our business. My daughter just turned 20, and by any reasonable standard has another 50 years of consumer electronic purchases ahead of her. And she has friends, and yeah, they talk. A lot, in fact. Too bad, not important to Nokia. They can't get the part that they themselves make. How big of a jackoff is THAT?

Anybody got any ideas where to go with this? If you have specific information/contacts that you'd rather not share in a public forum, feel free to send an email through the board (PM box pretty much is stuck on full). Confidentiality guaranteed.

Thank you.

Edited September 3, 2010 by JSngry

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

There is no longer any doubt - about fifty years ago I read an article in Playboy - yes I read the articles in Playboy - entitled "Nothing works and nobody cares". So it's not even the fault of Reagan and Thatcher.

Everyone I know, including, amazingly, my wife, treats mobile phones as a consumable item. Find out the name of the marketing manager or sales manager at Nokia and write them a stinking letter - I'm sure you'd be good at that - and end up by saying you're going to get the cheapest thing in Wal-mart.

MG

[JSngry]

Yeah, well, you know, this phone was $500.00 new. I know that's "disposable" income for many, but not in our house!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Yeah, well, you know, this phone was $500.00 new. I know that's "disposable" income for many, but not in our house!

Struth!

MG

[papsrus]

[JSngry]

That's pretty much how it was going...

[Big Wheel]

Are you 100% sure that the SIM reader is the only thing wrong with the phone as a result of the water damage? If not, it would suck to go through all this time and effort only to find that the phone is still busted.

I'm assuming you've also tried the carrier at this point (AT&T?) if you got the phone through them. Failing that you might want to try some independent little repair shop in your area to see if they are familiar with this handset and might have a line on parts. In California these usually amount to one or two Asian dudes in a tiny little operation, but I suspect that some of them might have a connection to the Chinese factories that make the parts, if you know what I mean...

Failing that, the best solution might actually be to get yourself a Twitter account and tweet the living shit out of your experience, making sure to add Nokia's account so they see your displeasure. The main Nokia account is @nokia. It'll probably help to have at least a few followers so they know you have a bit of a megaphone. I know this sounds ridiculous, but social media is so new to most of these companies that many of them devote extra effort to customer service via Twitter that they NEVER give to people coming through the usual channels. Case in point was when I angrily tweeted AT&T about terrible DSL customer support and one of their reps on Twitter apologized and offered to look into it within about 5 minutes of my posting.

And if that doesn't work? Find the number for Nokia US and dig through the phonetree to find executives at the director or VP level (some research using Google will help identify good candidates). If you don't think the squeaky wheel gets the grease, watch what happens when an angry customer manages to get some bigwig's assistant on the line and screams at her for 10 minutes. Unlike customer support reps, these people are not used to being confronted by the great unwashed, and their bosses will move heaven and earth to make sure that those peons in customer support do whatever it takes to make that fucking person go away.

Edited September 4, 2010 by Big Wheel

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for the advice; if my old fashioned letter to Best Buy's Corporate Care address doesn't get me some satisfaction about how I was treated by one of their car stereo installers last weekend, I've got some other ideas about alternative approaches.

[JSngry]

Yeah, that's good advice, some of which we've already begun to follow.

The wildcard is this - is the phone actually repairable or not. Numerous independnt repair centers say it is, several of my daughter's electronic-savant-geek-friends insist that it is, only Nokia service center reps say that it's not, and they won't let go fo the "not covered by warranty" verbiage, which makes me question how stuck on autopilot they are. Nobody on Nokia's end has been able to extrapolate on to the specific damage that is rendering the phone allegedly unrepairable.

If the phone has truly suffered irreparable damage, fine. Shit happens. But I feel that it is not at all unreasonable to be expect to be provided with a detail report upon demand. That's basic professional behavior.

Oh well....onward...this ain't over, not just yet.