I think this process that you are going to is working exactly as intended. I think Nokia is relying on attrition to cut their costs down. Their reputation is irrevocably damaged in my opinion.

It's hard to believe and understand how Nokia can send it back out without even testing the phone. As les_garten stated this just destroys their reputation.
Doc

Further backing up all the ranting I've been making about how Nokia does NOT provide an acceptable customer service experience. This is a rant that I can recall making for years, now, since purchasing my N800 and experiencing nothing but an incredibly frustrating series of experiences and insulting phone support (that is, insulting offers of "support" like--no repair.. and an incredible 'discounted' price to replace an item that costs more than the item I purchased in the first place).

It's incredibly sad really. For the longest time, I have postponed joining the discussions in these forums for the point where I could explain how much I love the N900, but I never thought I would be joining under these conditions.

The USB port on my N900 has, for all intents and purposes, died and now it is incredibly painful to look at the bad experiences in this thread.

I have not started my inevitably horrible journey with Nokia customer service yet, and I believe I will receive more sympathy here explaining how much of my life has been wrapped up in this device and therefore Nokia.

In high school, I decided that the N800 would be a great, open device that I could rely on without being trapped within the closed environments of competitors, and thus I spent the $200 for the device. Lo and behold, I beheld the rumored RX-51, and waited in eager anticipation for the successor to my beloved device.

Now the point to this rambling is that for the N900 I spent $550 for the device, $550 that a freshman college student does not have! Therefore this device has my music, videos, books, comics, my life within it... and now I am going to lose that to the most ignorant common problem in an electronic device I have heard of in recent memory: a faulty usb port! There have been people on this thread speaking of externally charging the battery in the phone, or that people must be being too rough with the phone, but they are ignoring the key issue here. It is unfathomable that there is a repeated issue of the USB port breaking, especially after having the damn phone for only 5 months!

Now I love the N900, and for the longest I had been dying to give a response to all the naysayers that seem to troll this site every day. I appreciate the idea of an open system that stands in direct contrast to the incredibly closed environments of competitors, particularly the Iphone. However, if Nokia does not respect a long supporter of their endeavors and gives me the loop, I will not be fool enough to ever hand them any of my money which in Michigan is very hard to come by. I may also end up commenting more on Maemo.org, but for reasons that may not have the blessings of the moderators of this site.

Now I have search for the box that this device came in and hope my anger dies down a bit... If anyone is willing to give me advice, I bought the N900 in January from Newegg. I just hope either company is able to come through for me.

This is a repost of my initial post back in January 13th because I think it will help some people worrying about the USB port failure. I am yet to see any problems with my port. Still feels as solid as the day I bought it. -

Seems it is time to ask those have the usb problem what kind of ca101 did they use? The default one came with the phone or other ones?

this helped me a lot! after 2 weeks of obtaining the device, i read about the usb issue, in finding a solution/prevention, i am directed to your post!. thanks!

This is unbelievable! I've had my new N900 for exactly a week now and the USB port is already broken! This is ridiculous! I just signed a two year contract, it's a great phone but this is very very cheap/bad/unbelievable/no words for this. Even if I get a new phone from my provider (I live in Holland), the same problem might just as well happen with the new one, and then what?

Is there no way to fix this ourselves?

Well they can try wathever they want, that won't stop me from calling and annoying them. The N900 just costed me too much to start paying for repairs after only 3 months.
I've had bad luck with all kinds of electronics from all kinds of brands, but never with a Nokia product. I just hope they can sort this thing out before they, like you just said, really damage their reputation.

I couldn't understand it either. The documents that came back with the package said the software had been repaired... But my software had no problem what so ever! Maybe my phone just happenned to fall in the hands of a Czech (that's where it got sent to apparently) tech guy that wasn't in the mood for fixing it.. TWICE..

Just wondering what you guys think of this comment made on the whirlpool site here in Aus.

"1. MicroUSB port issue where it gets ripped off the main pcb was happening mainly on the pre-retail version of N900 which was gven out to a number of early testers. It is not common on the retail version of N900."