Nokia C3 product defect unsolved, 3rd time for repair

the nightmare called Nokia C3 continues. we had previously posted here product defect problems with 2 brand new units of Nokia C3 . one was bought in august 2010 and another in december 2010. the august 2010 unit has been sent to the Nokia Care Center for repairs 4 times already while the december 2010 unit 2 times.

the december unit has been repaired but after only 2 weeks, we have sent it back again to Nokia Care Center for more repairs. this will be the 3rd time we have brought it for repairs since it was bought. we brought the unit back to the greenhills nokia care center yesterday, april 17, 2011.

this is a repeat of the previous problems – the unit very often turns itself off when it is charged  and it turns itself off when being used at times. this is one of the problems we have had with this unit when we had brought it in for repairs. it has not been solved apparently.

a slight good news – it has not deleted all the contacts and files when it turns itself off which was one of the major problems encountered previously.

for this 3rd repair, the nokia care center manager, ronald said they will now need to replace the whole motherboard. they had apparently not done so in the 2nd repair.

if this was a laptop, replacing the motherboard is the most  major repair one can do to a laptop. the cost apparently is almost as high as buying a new laptop. if you had to pay for this kind of repair, the advise you will get is not to have the motherboard replaced but buy a brand new laptop instead. this is probably true for cell phones.

i had asked about my previous request to refund the money we paid for the nokia C3 but  ronald, the nokia care center manager said they will not be able to refund the cost. asked why not, he was unable to give any reason.

i asked who i can talk to about it. he gave me a name and cellphone number to call, a certain janelle. i asked him to call this janelle person so i can talk to her. he went to an inner room and spent some minutes using the telephone but he came out to tell me  janelle was not answering her cellphone. bi wondered what he did on the phone for some minutes if she did not answer.

ronald promised me janelle will call me in the evening of sunday or today. i dialed the cellphone number and he was right, the number just kept ringing.

we will be posting more here later.

read other posts here:

• Nokia C3 product defect – hard resets by itself, deletes contact list, messages and files : http://wp.me/paTrm-1tS
• nokia care center – stupid things at call centers : 3 versions of stupid: http://wp.me/paTrm-1uh

nokia care center – stupid things at call centers : 3 versions of stupid

this is in relation to the the nokia C3  product problems we have elevated to the nokia care center.

we  had called  the nokia care center a few days ago. we called again yesterday to follow up.  when the call center agent talked to us,  we promptly gave the reference number we had for the case. after a few seconds, to give time for the computer of call center agent to have our record appear on his computer monitor, we told him why we called:

me : i called a few days ago and the agent told me she will call me up gain during that day to let me know status of my request. she did not call back then and i have not received a call since then, for 3 days now.

nokia care center agent: sir, nobody called you yet about it?

me : yes, nobody has called me and i want to know the status.

nokia care center agent : did anyone call you , sir?

me: no, nobody has called me yet.

nokia care center agent : sir, nobody has told you the status for your case?

me: wait a minute – look i have already told you nobody has called me about it yet. you have asked me the same question in 3 versions already,  i will give you the same answer. please do not ask me the same question in a 4th version .

listen to me – nobody has called me since i first called to tell me what the status of  the case is. let’s move on and tell me what the status is.

i did not understand why the call center agent asked me the same question in 3 versions. i had to stop him after the 3rd time as i felt he was preparing to ask me the same thing in a 4th version. what was the point of it? did he think i will change my answer if he asked me again? 3 stupid questions in a single call!

the net effect of asking the same question in 3 versions is only to lengthen the conversation. asking the same 3 times will not give the call center agent any other information nor make his understanding of it better but it will only annoy the customer.

Nokia C3 product defect – hard resets by itself, deletes contact list, messages and files

we have never had a nokia cell phone before,  we have had a motorola, sony ericcsson and a samsung.  no particular reason why we never bought a nokia, it was just the cell phones we have had like the sony ericcsson and samsung have done very well that we did not consider getting other brands. based on experience, sonny ericcsson and samsung cell phones are self-sustaining – they hardly break, the user experience is easy, very reliable and they last long.

nokia C3 product defect

but not for teen-agers. teen-agers seem to be in love with nokia cell phones. when it was time to replace her old cell phone, my teen-age daughter looked for a replacement phone and she was convinced a nokia c3 was the best buy.

looking at the specs, she was correct – it was a qwerty phone, bigger than normal screen, wi-fi, decent camera, nice color and at a very good value price of only P6,500+. the phone actually had  everything she wanted at a very good price.

think again.

we bought the phone in august 2010 and since the time we bought it, we had gone back to the nokia repair center 4 times, an average of every 2 months to have the phone repaired for the SAME reason –  her phone hard resets on its own. what happens is it turns off on its own and when you power  it back on, everything in the cell phone is gone – address book, files and even the games that came pre-installed with the phone when it was purchased.  there were also times when she can’t send text and can ‘t connect to the internet through wi-fi.

sometime in december, 2010, my son needed to replace his own cell phone as well, thinking that maybe the experience of my daughter is isolated and since it had great features at a good value price, we bought a 2nd C3 for my son.

guess what – we have been to the nokia repair center twice already with my son’s C3 for exactly the same reason we have been going back for my daughter’s cell phone.

for those 6 times we have brought the 2 Nokia C3 cell phone, what they had done was “update” the OS. unfortunately, it does not seem to work as after some time of the update, the same problem reappears. so now i am thinking this is no longer an OS problem but a hardware problem. and since the same problem occurred in two units, i think this is a product defect already.

being that, i had asked nokia for a refund of our money. i just did not want to keep on going back to the nokia repair center every 2 months for each nokia C3 that we bought. aside from the hassle and gasoline expense, the  inconvenience of having my children’s contact lists, files and messages deleted every 2 months is just too much of a bother.

we have called nokia for this request. we will update this blog as things develop.