Hi everyone, I'd like to share with you my adventure of trying to buy -not steal- a navicore gps kit for my new nokia n800. I live in greece, nokia greece does not sell the n800 so i bought it off a greek e-shop that sold it. That was the easy part. Then I tried to buy the gps kit...oh boy. Nokia so far is the exclusive seller of the product, but they sell it only through their regional sites. I could not buy it in greece which makes sense since the n800 is not sold there, but then my employer sent me to Rome for a couple of months. It seemed like a good opportunity to buy the kit from the italian site. But then Nokia does not accept visa electron so I should go get a credit card. So my father gave me his. but when i went to place the order, they said that the delivery address should be the same as the billing address and that it should be inside italy. So my point is that nokia sells this kit only to people with credit cards, only through the internet and even then you have to be a citizen of the country that the nokia store belongs to. it seemed so easy at the beginning..i have the money, they have the product so lets swap! but it was not to be. I contacted them and they said "We are sorry not being able to propose you an alternative solution. However, we appreciate your remarks which will help us to improve and expand our services in future."

Thanks Nokia.


also thanks readers for bearing with me. (first post, i promise to keep my next posts smaller)

You can ask a friend of yours in Italy to buy it for you with his credit card (italian one of course) and then refund him.
Do you know of someone that is willing to do it ?

I do live in Italy, but not in Rome unfortunately.
I am quite sure no store in Rome is selling it, but you can check if there are Nokia authorized resellers that are willing to order it for you and pay at the local store when the kit arrives.

Thank you for your reply anidel. I don't know any italians that well so I'm reluctunt to ask anyone's credit card details just yet maybe I'll start phishing! I will try your second idea though. I dont have much hope though because I am by now convinced that for some reason nokia hate my guts and does not want to sell me the kit.

Giving the title odessey to my experience made me think that poor Odysseas could use a GPS. Who knows, maybe he had one with a pretty amazing POI database!

I don't understand Nokia's direct selling restrictions either.. when I was still considering the 770 it couldn't yet be bought in my country, and I tried all kind of avenues to get it. I mean, there was nothing in the 770 that wouldn't be perfectly fine in my country.. but there simply was no way. Is that how to make sales?

Eventually Nokia expanded their regions so I'm not affected anymore, but it's a very strange practice indeed.

Update: I just saw the Nokia N800 being sold in an EXPERT store (near Naples). Expert is a chain of electronic stuff and should also be present in Rome.
If they sell the N800 they could as well sell the Nav. Kit.

If you are still in Italy I would suggest to go anche check with them.

http://www.expertroma.com/

From what I could see on the navicore web site you can also buy directly from them.

I already have a bluetooth GPS , so I ordered the software from the website of Navicore in Finland . It arrived promptly in the Uk , I'm very pleased with it