N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

Dear readers,

this is my first posting to the meamo forum and I want to address it directly to Nokia people.

When I first heard of the N900 device in late August 2009 I thought that this would be a trustworthy replacement for my old Openmoko Freerunner phone.The maemo community is just as great as the Openmoko is so I preordered the new device on August 31st, 2009 from the German Nokia shop. Since I have no credit card for payment Nokia tells you on its ordering page that you have to transfer credit within five days. Well, so I did.

On that time (August 31st) the German online shop told me on its webpage that the shipment of the N900 would probably start on October1st, 2009. A few days later I wrote a mail to Nokia customer support asking whereas my credit transfer was received. I got an answer from them that my payment was received on September 2nd, 2009 and that the N900 would probably start shipping on October 12th, 2009. I was wondering why an automatic mail notification that your payment was received would not be send.

Meanwhile I started reading the maemo forums and all the discussion when and where the N900 would finally start shipping.

It was here where I first read that the shipment date for Germany was pushed back from October 12nd, 2009 to October 30th, 2009.

The next thing I read here four weeks later was yet another delay from October 30th, 2009 to November 25th, 2009.

In any case I didnt get a single notification mail from Nokia about the delay. I only got the information from the maemo forum and occasional visits to the German online shop.

You might wonder why I am writing this to the forum and not to customer support. Yes thats what I did a few days ago. However I didnt get a single line of reply from them simply ignoring a qualified concern.

This behaviour is very frustrating and not customer friendly. I can accept delays for whatever reason, but I want some official information.

On the other hand I didnt understand the delay. Reading about 300 summit devices with final hardware revision send to beta testers for the mass preproduction os test is ok, but I would bet that for most customers it would be fine using a device thats updated frequently until its final os state. You simply do this everywhere. My Ubuntu desktop is updated regulary, Windows get updates now and then. Creating a bug free os is impossible.

So if maemo as Nokia states is a community driven os, why there is no trust in the community by pushing shipment dates back for nearly two months and ignoring paying customers?

Thanks for reading this -- I feel better now :-)
Nekron

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

The most likely reason is that there were more pre-orders than actual shipments, so they had to delay it to keep up with the demand (which they underestimated). The ironing of the software isn't the reason for the delay, it's just something that could easily be done while doing the main task: to produce more units.

At least this is my guess, but I've to agree about that Nokia's delays suck, as they always seem to happen, yet no one ever has any information about for how long and why it was made, and in many cases the reason for the delay can't be spotted on the final devices (like the case of the N97).

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

Nekron
Welcome to Maemo.org. You may find this thread offers some comfort

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...highlight=step

Mike C

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

Welcome to the forum Nektron.

It is doubtful that you would get any meaningful reply from Nokia employees on this forum regarding Nokia customer support, or lack there of in your case.

Customer support isn't the purpose of this Forum and most of this forums members who work for Nokia, work in the technical side of Nokia's house.
As a result any information you receive would more than likely be the same as it is from any other member with regard to Nokia's customer service, anecdotal at best.

A more customer centric Nokia forum would probably be...
>> http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/discussions/

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/ isn't in more suitable for this than t.m.o. - both are end user oriented forums, and while http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/ is completely ignored by Nokia, we know that Nokia employees read and post here. (Of course they're not responsible for customer support.)

The main problem is that Nokia is totally uncapable of doing all the things that involve direct contact with end users. Nekron's story is not something that accidentally happened. It's the Nokia way of doing business: They see it as "give money, receive product" (which will eventually happen in Nekron's case, so for Nokia everything's fine), but any kind of additional communication, of talking to the customer, is an unnecessary waste of resources.

Nekron states very clearly what could have been expected (and reasonably so) by a customer: a mail that confirms they received his payment, further mails about the status of his order, delays etc. - There shouldn't have been any reason for him to call even once. This actually saves them money. But they're not prepared for this. They're not prepared for saving their own time and money because they don't understand consumers.

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

The problem is that nobody other that Nokia Maemo Devices unit knows when the N900 will ship. Shops including Nokia's own can only guess based on the official press release (end of october), Nokia's official or internal roadmaps (october?), or Maemo Devices' public delay notice (november in Peter's post in this forum).

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

Welcome Nektron.

I am a Freerunner owner too and in same conditions, that is impatiently waiting for n900.

There si some difference in the devel process of Freerunner and n900, first of all that Nokia wants to release a bugfree phone(i still suffer from bug 1024 on my FR).

Consider that this is a "short" delay so Nokia would give little info about this.

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

Welcome =)

I actually wanted to buy freerunner as well, but since it didn't support 3G and it seemed a bit uncertain if it would even make calls, I eventually decided against buying it and started waiting for first android devices - which in the end turned out not be at all what I wanted. So here we are in the same boat, waiting for our n900 to ship.

Personally, I understand nokia not sending payment confirmations, I pretty much take it as granted that if they have charged my credit card, they have the money. But not sending delay notices sucks big time. Even if it is a preorder...

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

I'd say that's the bit that sucks. Amazon bothered to email me when they changed the date, even though my card won't be billed until it ships. Mind, they still have the current date as '2nd November' so they're not very on the ball in that respect...I guess Peter's "November" would cover that.

If Nokia already have your money, the least they can do is let you know of a delay. Not sure that isn't covered in some sort of contractual obligation once they have your dosh?

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

He didn't use a credit card but transferred the money directly to their bank account - plus they state that the money has to be there within 5 days. That's a very different story. It's reasonable (in fact, it's the only sane thing to do) to call before the 5 days are over and check if the transaction was successful. Sending a confirmation would be cheaper for them than handling all these calls. (I work for the customer service department of my company, and reducing the number of unnecessary calls is one of the main things you do in this job...)

Re: N900, Nokia and customer satisfaction
 

ah, I misread. Sorry ;(

An E-mail notification would indeed be in place, then.