Yeah it is

More like a lack of commitment to US service providers...

As I was putting together my planned post I went to "My-Tmoble" web site and registered to look at my plan and to get more particulars...
Good thing I did. I found that the "200 anytime minutes" the dude who sold me claimed I had turned out to be 200 MB.
In one day I had used 22.

I called up customer service to find WTF? After hearing "sounds like you want to add my favorites to your plan" for the third time after I clearly said "speak to a representative" I yelled an obscenity and was immediately connected to a live agent.

She of course apologized for the confusion and said that the 5gig plan would cost me $49 a month instead of $29 but she would be happy to change it for me. I asked if the dude who sold me this thing would now get a spiff or commission on the $49 plan and she said yes. I said "I now see where he got his motivation". She said she would put notes on this account so his manager can give him additional "coaching".

I asked if I am still able to walk away from this plan at anytime without an ETF and she said sure.
I went back to the T-mobile site to see what plan she put me on and found it to be the Monthly WC Promo 5GB.
This gives you only data and will not allow you to call out. Calls to the phone get a recording saying "The customer does not wish to receive calls on this line" or somesuch. This is fine with me because I have to carry a non-gsm company phone anyway.

In any event there is some writing somewhere on the website that states "Promotional plans require a contract extension." If this a promotional plan than the second agent I spoke with on the phone, slammed me with a contract.

I'll find an e-mail addy to a real person somewhere and unless they can give me something in writing, I'm walking out within the "buyers remorse" period.

That crap^ is why the US market is so hard to crack and why there are so many negative threads out there that hold Nokia in some sort of suspicion or even contempt. It is not Nokia specific. Rather, it is a contempt for all manufacturers of phones sold to US consumers because in the past they were only available through service providors... everyone knows that game is rigged.

So has anyone else heard of a bit of dirt on the display, but under the touchscreen?

I hadn't, until today.

I got one of those duds too.. there are no issues and everything works. The only thing I haven't tested yet is the FM transmitter. Mine must be seriously broken because it doesn't even need to be charged particularly often!

Yep, something similar here. I must use my N900 as BT modem for my N800 (because that's where I'll have to do my e-mailing until critical issues are sorted out on Maemo 5), or, alternatively, I could swap the SIM in my N900 with one from another phone and connect from the N900 to the other phone (and I could then also connect from my N800 to that same phone).

None of this seems to currently be possible out of the box.

I thought BT PAN was easy enough ?

BT PAN maybe - but I'm after DUN. Which may be easy too, the issue is only that it's not there (afaik) out of the box.

suck!

... a return issue?

Well after using my loaner for about 3 month now (as primary device) I have a _lot_ of dust inside the display. So don't worry about a bit of dirt, it will soon get company :/

Hopefully the Koreans doing a better job at assembling than the Finns

I noticed that there's now a BT DUN server script in the repositories.

That was a frequent problem in the factories I worked in and with. If you don't have appropriate ESD and handling measures, dust LOVES to cling to glass. Heck, N80s made in Reynosa looked like ant farms...

I'm so jealous of you all here. Mine seems to be stuck in East Midlands UK...By the time it gets to me, I'll be in the midst of finals and won't have any time to play with it...err, "Develop consumer-quality high-grade applications" for it