A Mr. Ma from Nanjing wrote to People's Daily Online on May 10 to share his miserable experience of drawn-out negotiations with a local after-sale service center for Nokia cell phones. Two days earlier, he had smashed his Nokia 3230 in the presence of maintenance staff at the center located on Shigu Street. His phone remained dead despite repeated attempts to repair it �C he has visited the center at least five times since April last year.

"This is to show my anger over Nokia's deceitful service and shoddy product quality," said Mr. Ma in his complaint mail, which gave details of the whole affair.

In April 2006, he bought a Nokia 3210 at Nanjing D.Phone (or Dixintong) Mall, but the system crashed and the screen went black within 24 hours. He immediately took it to the service center (then located on Hanzhong Road), where the staff said there was no quality problem and agreed to a software update.

The second time he went, the center claimed the problem was bad contact between the main board and the screen, but refused to issue a maintenance record sheet, saying that they would keep it.

The third visit played out much the same way.

By September, the phone was completely dead, and Mr. Ma went to the center for the fourth time (which had been relocated to Shigu Road), demanding his phone be exchanged for a new one. However, the center only agreed to replace the main board, and Nokia's hotline (4008800123) promised to extend the guarantee automatically to October 2007. The center still refused to provide maintenance records.

On May 8 this year, Mr. Ma again took the faulty cell to the maintenance center, but it denied guaranteeing a warranty extension and insisted on charging him.

"Nokia's changeable and deceitful service attitude irritated me so much that I smashed the phone in their face."

In his letter Mr. Ma wrote: "Nokia, if you still claim to be a responsible company, please publish my voice recording from when I called your hotline. I'm willing to bear legal responsibility for every word I have said. Are you prepared to do this?"

By People's Daily Online