One of these days I was doing some minor shopping – getting stuff that I needed for ages but never had enough time, money or will to actually buy. While walking from shop to another, I was passing by the “Germanos” office.
“Germanos”, for those of you outside of Cyprus, is a large local distributor (reseller?) of mobile phones and accessories. They have a few shops in each city around the island, and I was passing by one of those shops.
I was planning to visit them for a couple of month now. The keyboard of my Sony Ericsson P910i was smashed a few times, and the digits of the numeric pad don’t work anymore. Dialing is still possible with the touch screen keyboard, but it’s not very convenient for numbers that are not in the address book.
So, I came in and asked for the technician. The sales lady pointed me towards a man, who was occupied with another customer. I came closer, and the guy stopped his conversation and asked me what I wanted. I showed him the phone and asked if it was possible to replace the keyboard (I know it’s possible, I was just wondering if they can do it). He said that, of course, they can fix my phone, but for that they will have to confiscate it and send it to the service center in Nicosia. He mentioned that it will take at least 8 business days.
Oops.
I was standing there totally confused and puzzled. 8 business days. Like people don’t call each other on weekends. So, it’s more like 14 days. Plus a few for that “at least” bit. Plus a few for the Christmas season’s excuse “but you know, we are very busy right now”. I can’t even count that far…
In the agony of the last hope, I asked if they can provide any replacement for that time. Something. I don’t need the same model. Not even the same brand. But just something that can accept and place calls with my SIM card inserted. The answer I got was a firm “No!”.
Oh, well. I better have a damaged phone than no phone at all. The same way as I would rather have a dial-up connection or even an expensive and slow GPRS connection, than no Internet at all. No matter how bad it is, it’s still better than nothing.