Got my phone back finally. The screen has been replaced, and it appears to be working as expected.

So I did get it fixed, but it costs me twice as much and took more than twice as long just because I live in Canada. Also if I hadn't been headed to the States to visit my friends, I would have had to have paid import duty on the phone itself or on the repair work (!) depending which Canadian Customs official you listen to).

I also had to chase up with repeated phone calls at every step. If I had not done so, I'm fairly sure my phone would be languishing in the limbo of Nokia's third-party repair contractor's processing department.

Ah well. What changes have I missed in the last 3 months? ;-)

Thanks to everyone who added their thoughts, advice and experiences to this thread. Hopefully it will be some use to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation to me (hopefully not).