[maemo-developers] N810 discount code frustration

[From: Frantisek Dufka]

Vivia Nikolaidou wrote:
> Anyway, here is the story:

All this is very unfortunate and it is too late now but you could have 
done some things better to minimize those issues. I'm not sure about 
N810 program but with N800 there was a FAQ page
http://maemo.org/community/wiki/n800developerdeviceprogram/ (see "Nokia 
shops don't cover my country, do I still have a chance?") and 
implications were discussed in this list many times. Maybe with future 
developer device programs (if any) this should be stressed again to 
prevent or minimize such frustration. Here are the facts:

- devices are sold only in some countries
- you need to use online store of those countries
- you need to use credit card with shipping and billing address from 
that country

So the best way is to have friend from that country who will buy the 
device for you, use his/her own credit card, gets the device, then 
preferably also tests the device (and handles possible replacement) and 
then ships it to you. Unfortunately you can't ship device directly to 
you and you can't use your own credit card. And most probably you can't 
easily claim warranty in your country if device arrives broken or gets 
broken later. This is the reality you either accept or not. The other 
choice Maemo team had (and I think they really considered it) was to 
limit the program only for developers from those selected countries to 
prevent similar unhappy stories. Fortunately they decided against such 
'unfair' setup and some developers (including me) are very happy with 
this :-)

The first (770) device program was done differently and maemo team 
shipped device directly which was of course better for developer outside 
of those countries but I can perfectly understand this was not easy and 
most possibly such experiment was possible only in the beginning of such 
project.

Frantisek