Update, May 26 2008

It has been more than 12 days since I originally gave my phone for the repair. The last I heard from the service center was this:

"Sir, the technicians tried to update/install the software again, but the phone is not accepting it. we need to send it to "Higher" service center."

Their higher service center is supposed to be somewhere in Cunningham Road, Bangalore. I have not got any further updates about it from Nokia Care.

Meanwhile, I posted a link to this blog at Nokia Support's website, and they responded. The asked for my phone-numbers, but when I reverted with my phone-numbers, nobody called me. They then sent me another email and asked six questions -

1. Complete address of the Nokia Care Centre
2. IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identifier) /Serial number of the mobile phone
3. Job sheet number
4. Date of submission of the handset
5. Date and place of purchase
6. Case reference number provided by the Nokia Careline representative (if any)

So, even though they know my name, they cannot locate my phone in their IT system using it. Not only that, even though I mentioned about the service center in detail in the previous post, still nobody read it carefully. So, they want me to tell them the "complete (postal) address" of the Nokia Care center. Now, as far as I understand what an IMEI means, it is a globally unique number, so it should be sufficient, but they have asked for Job sheet number, Date of submission of the handset and purchase date, all of which should easily have been available to them by just using the IMEI.

Is this the state of Nokia's service and repair business all over the world? I mean, there is money to be made here, they are not doing a charity. The cost of servicing and repairing (based on expected ratio of such cases) is already factored in by all manufacturers in their products.

Why are they like this - is it because this is India? Will they do the same if they were even selling 10% of the phones in US compared to India?

I have replied to the nokia helpline/service with the details that they asked for, requesting them to return my N95 in full working condition at the earliest. Now its wait and watch.