Weekend Reminder: Nokia’s warranty service still stinks
By Stefan Constantinescu on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 1:11 AM PST In Nokia
Since I began blogging I got a lot of email from people thinking that I have some magical powers to fix their mobile phone just because I have a few friends at Nokia (NYSE: NOK). This is not the case, please stop sending me emails, but recently I stumbled across a blog post that resonated all too well with me. Eric Cherng, a developer over at Vertigo Software, recently had the backlight on his Nokia N95 die. It happens, rarely, but it happens. Eric is a modern man, he purchased his phone in America, but when it decided to become defective he was in Asia. A simple trip to the local Nokia service center right, they are an international company? Wrong, the phone was sold in America therefore it had to be fixed in an American service center.
Here is a top tip Nokia. Internet companies, something you now call yourself, operate on the internet. To quote the hacker manifesto:
We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias. [Emphasis added]
Made in America, made in Finland, made in China, it doesn’t matter. Eric bought his phone from Nokia. Nokia operates all over the world. Nokia proudly advertises the fact that a majority of their devices have quadband GSM so they work, literally, all over the world. Now I know if my phone breaks I have 5 others to choose from, but I’m not the regular consumer. People like Eric are the regular customer and right now his thoughts on his experiance sum up everything that is wrong with Nokia’s warranty service:
Companies need to get it straight. If you’re going to market yourself as a global company and create a global device, you better support your own product globally! Nokia gets an A grade for technological superiority, but an F for one of the worst support I’ve ever experienced.
Best case scenario someone at Nokia will read this blog post, contact Eric, he gets his device fixed ASAP. That shouldn’t be the case, Eric should never have had to make that blog post in the first place.
But why did Eric’s blog post resonate with me? Back when I lived in America I purchased an HDTV. After doing all the right research I knew exactly what model I wanted, but it wasn’t out in America yet. Internet saves the day! I found a Samsung dealer from New York who can get televisions directly from Korea and he just happened to ship to the 48 states. After owning that television for 13 months, 1 month after the warranty expired, it decides to break down. I call the guy who sold me the TV and he apologizes, but there is nothing he can do but give me Samsung’s phone number. I made that next phone call with the most pessimistic attitude since my TV was from Samsung Korea and not Samsung USA, yet what happened over the next 15 minutes left me speechless. They apologized the television broke, the girl even made a joke about how much “it must suck to have your TV break less than a month after the warranty expires.” I got the thing repaired for free and my warranty extended 90 days just in case that repair proved to be defective.
That is how a company who operates around the world should treat their customers.
I don’t want to discourage you from buying Nokia. In the close to one decade of owning their product I have had 0, as in none, of their devices break. They make some of the most advanced mobile phones, multimedia computers, call them what you will, on the planet. If one does decide to kick the bucket however, I don’t want to go through what Eric experienced.
Many of us here in Indonesia encounter that more or less same problem too. Ever since the earlier Communicator series (starting from the Nokia 9210), Nokia tends to set higher price tags for these mobiles than it does on the same models offered in neighboring countries such as, for example, Singapore. Price difference could reach around 30%. And hence, some folks would just spend their cash for those Singapore retail goods and later find out that they can’t make any warranty claims for their shiny new Communicators to Nokia Indonesia should anything goes wrong with the handhelds, even if they are actually still under warranty. In other words, Indonesians purchasing those Communicators from foreign retailers are forced to pay for any sorts of defects if they choose to deal with Nokia Indonesia, again, even when the products concerned are still under warranty.
So why oh why, Nokia, can’t you give us a proper international warranty agreement?
I think the saddest part is with those humidity issues. 3 of my friends have lost their warranty (and phones) because Nokia says the phones have had too much humidity. None of them had dropped their phones in water, or allowed it to get wet in rain etc.
In Finland this has been discussed even in tv. It’s a strange situation to customer who brings his phone to service because of a software failure, gets his phone back after a week, without anything other done to it, except warranty has been voided. Customer doesn’t get anything else than Nokias word on it, that it’s caused by moisture.
Stefan, thanks for linking to my post on your blog. I had the local Nokia support fix the phone already, but in doing so, not only did I have to pay for the service, but it most likely voided my Nokia USA warranty. The whole situation is ironic as I bought the phone original from the Nokia Chicago store paying full price and more in order to have a legitimate Nokia USA warranty. If I had known this earlier, I would have bought my phone from the local import/export dealer and saved a bundle!