Today, while returning a mobile phone, I lost my internal cool for the first time in a long time. The store I bought the phone from has a 7 day return, 15 day replacement policy, but it took a lot of work to return the phone. It all went something like this:

Day 1 morning: I buy the phone

Day 1 evening: I go back and try to return it because of lack of Wi-Fi (I don't have any use for 3G). I am refused after about a half hour of explaining to three different people, but am given an offer to take me to a nearby Nokia Care the next day

Day 2 morning, one of the employees goes with me to Nokia Care and we find out that they won't take the phone back because there's no problem with it. They confirm that the Chinese version does not have Wi-Fi

Day 2: I spend time using the phone, downloading files onto it and testing it out, since I going to have to keep it. It's a nice gizmo

Day 2 afternoon: I notice when opening the PDF reader (which came pre-installed and worked initially) that it crashes immediately

Day 2 afternoon: I return to the store, and another employee grudgingly agrees to go with me to the Nokia Care again. I get the feeling from the manager that he thinks I'm just making this problem up.

Day 2 afternoon: The store employee gets bored waiting for the line at Nokia Care and leaves. The engineers look at the phone. I'm not 100% sure there was a hardware problem, but the woman a the front desk says she'll help me return the phone. I breathe a sigh of relief, and she laughs. After more waiting, it turns out I need to wait until the next day for some reason I didn't understand (perhaps she needed the stamp), but I'll definitely be able to get the slip saying that I can return the phone. I'm still worried about the Zhongyu Telecom store at this point. In China, nothing is for sure until the money is in your hand.

Day 3 morning: I try to copy the files I put on the memory card somewhere else, but find that it's corrupted to the point that Windows isn't even able to delete things. Again, not sure if this was a hardware problem or something that one of the Nokia techs did.

Day 3 afternoon: The Nokia Care rep doesn't call me, so around 5 p.m. I head over there and it turns out that she wrote down my phone number on the receipt that she gave me proving that they took the phone. But as soon as I walk in, she stamps the receipt with the official stamp and says that's all I need.

Day 3 afternoon: I head back to the Park & Shop and go through the little dance to get the "I'm here to return something" ticket for a third time. Three different employees spend 5 minutes each, reading through the slip from Nokia.

They then try to tell me that the slip only says that I can exchange the phone, not return it (bald faced lie strategy). I counter that the Nokia rep definitely said clearly that this was for returning the phone and that they could call her if they liked.

They actually do call, which takes about 5 minutes. I overhear that all they have to do is give the slip to Nokia to get a new phone.

They then spend 25 minutes calling their boss. I watch Warlords (or whatever that new Andy Lau/Jet Li movie is called), which is playing on one of the display televisions. The manager, for whatever reason, isn't dealing with this and is also watching the movie.

They mutter a bunch about their sales for the month.

Finally they say it's okay, and one of them takes the Nokia slip and puts it in their safe. One of them goes up to the next floor to get the money. I wait another five minutes and she doesn't come down, but instead calls the phone and wants to talk to me directly.

I don't really understand, so one of her coworkers explains to me that they want to charge me another 80 yuan fee because I used a credit card to buy the phone. Had they been more helpful throughout the previous two days, I don't know if I would have relented to this, but for the first time in a while, I became very angry.

I said that I wouldn't agree to this, at which point the manager started trying to explain, and I started yelling at him, and I'm sure that a lot of people in the store heard me. After a short while of this, the employee on the phone tried talking into it, but the employee upstairs had hung up. I think she probably heard me too.

I decided to go up to the next floor myself and I ended up in the end getting all of the money back that I paid. They all made a lot of comments about how this was a lot of money. I guess they don't do many big returns.

For some reason I lost my internal calm, and maybe it helped.

After getting my money back, I tried not to let that disturb me too much either, but I just couldn't help feeling relieved.