Alright peeps, after a hell of a day discussing with Nokia back & forth I finally have a bit of a result. Mind I am in Belgium, but I guess the guarantee is Europe-Wide. Imho it comes down to which Nokia centre has been informed about the N900-USB issue, so it might not be the same situation in every country.

What I did was to give Nokia a bell this afternoon, first of all to ask whether they have received an update from Nokia HQ about the USB issue or not. As it turns out: Nokia Belgium has not, and it seems like that I am the first customer in Belgium with this issue (that's what the Hotline guy told me). Anyway, he said it should be under warranty & fixed, but I do not know whether he fully grasped the situation.

So I complained to him that the Nokia Care Centre here in Brussels totally refused to repair of my device (that was 2 weeks ago: he said he couldn't repair it, sending it in would produce the same result, oh yes and no warranty) and he was quite surprised to hear that, so he told me to go to a different one which I did. I called them before and they said they will take a look. When I got to #2 I had the impression the Nokia hotline guy had already made them aware that I would turn up or they had other people come in with n900 related problems, but when I got there the guy knew what was going on and said that we have to send it to Nokia BE.

Because:

After talking to him for a while he said they are the biggest Nokia store in Belgium and they have NOT received the n900 yet, therefore cannot offer any repair/exchange. In his opinion there must be a reason why the Phone has not been released in Belgium yet, and he presumed that Nokia certainly has a lot of problems with the device, therefore it has not been given out to retailers here yet! Bear in mind, this is all speculation!

He also said that in his opinion this issue is Nokia's wrongdoing and that they are aware of certain troubles with the device, but he didn't know anything precise (great guy btw). In the end it would be their decision what to do with my device.

I had to send in the device, after signing a sheet that the store (because I did not buy it there) will not be responsible for any repair fees/exchanges, which is fair enough, but they will support me in any way to get the device back from Nokia, either repaired or exchanged. I felt alot better after this, trust me.


To sum it up:

Nokia Care is NOT YET aware of the USB port troubles, but are certainly acknowledging that there are some troubles. As of now, no messages have been passed to Nokia Repair Centres: some are refusing all devices with these issues, claiming it's not under warranty, and others say they know about the issues and do not agree with Nokias policy, but their hands are tied. All they can do is send it to Nokia.

I have the impression things are rolling in the background, but I might be wrong. I am still not fully convinced that this will end well for me, they might contact me soon and tell me that there's nothing they can do. But hope never dies For now, I am keeping my fingers crossed.