Nokia Messaging – Free or Trial ? Confusion and Solution

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Nokia Messaging Email (Earlier Nokia Email when it started 2 years back on Betalabs) has been working great for me for long time. I never had much issues which many others reported about email delivery, slowing down phone etc.

So all was going well till recently. I was using 2 year "old" N82 happily with Nokia Messaging Email. Also I tried same with N97 mini. Both worked seamlessly. Email delivery was good, I could check emails in HTML view by default.

Then I got Nokia E72 for trial, Thanks to guys over at @womworldnokia , I knew that E72 is flagship Eseries with Nokia Messaging Email and IM built-in. Also it had lifetime (???) Nokia Messaging subscription free. I was not really sure about this. But I knew that in some countries Nokia Messaging is launched with specific plans from Operators. This is similar to the way Blackberry Email works. So to use the service you need to have certain Data Plans. But in India , Nokia has never launched such Operator specific plans yet. Fact is that almost all newer Nokia smartphones now come with Nokia Messaging built-in. This works with almost any operator in India if you have working GPRS plan(WAP plans may not work but I have not checked it)

My N82, N97 mini were working fine with Nokia Messaging Email and my subscription plan was shown as "Nokia Messaging Trial"

As "Trial" sounds like it is not going to be always there, I checked up with Nokia Care Helpline and tried to clarify things. But it seemed liked Helpline Agents were even more confused than me. They could not tell me difference between "Trial" and "Free". Also They could not tell me if this "Trial" is going to end and when.
What they kept repeating was that it is supported with Operator plans and many operators are supporting it in India.Finally I could never get satisfactory answers.

When I used same Nokia Messaging account on E72, It got setup with all email accounts. It was working well again. But thing which I noticed was change in Nokia Messaging Subscription plan. Somehow it got changed to "Nokia Messaging subscription - purchased with device"

All was fine, until something strange happened and my email stopped syncing. Intially I thought the issue was with EDGE connection but then I realized that something is wrong with Nokia Messaging as Web, other apps were working.I also got email from Nokia Messaging stating following.

“ Dear Nokia Messaging customer,



The Nokia Messaging account you have been enjoying came as part of the purchase of your Nokia phone. According to our records, that phone has been transferred to another person.


Your Nokia Messaging account has been deactivated. Your account is safe – it cannot be accessed by the new owner of your Nokia phone. In addition, you can sign up for a new Nokia Messaging account for use on another Nokia phone. Please visit the Nokia Messaging website (http://email.nokia.com/account) to see a list of Nokia phones that run with Nokia Messaging.


We look forward to serving you again.


Sincerely,


Nokia Messaging team


*** This email was generated automatically. Please do not reply to it. *** “ 
 
I just could not understand how my account got de-activated as E72 was still with me. Only one thing was possible that I tried to configure email account which was not part of Nokia Messaging account. So it thought that someone else is having phone now and trying to setup different Email accounts.This immediately cancelled/de-activated my account. This seems very good idea as if you happen to give phone , they can start using Nokia Messaging with their account. So it is Phone(IMEI) specific.
But this also caused lot of confusion/issues for me, initially I was not sure what is happening so I called Nokia Care again.After going through this Blog Post and some similar things on Nokia Discussion forum I started to understand things bit better. Nokia Care was able to activate my account. But for some reasons I was not able to use it again for setup. I then went ahead and cancelled Nokia Messaging Subscription from email.nokia.com. Then I tried to setup account and this worked.
 
Few days later I bought new Nokia E52, assuming that it will be also having so called "Lifetime Free Nokia Messaging". Even this was mentioned in some blogs like here but it was removed later. Surprise again :)
 
Irritating thing was unless you cancel your account you wont be able to setup it again or use any of email accounts with Nokia Messaging which you had earlier. Senseapplied has mentioned these issues here.
 
Also since in box there was not a single mention of Nokia Messaging , I thought something is strange here.
I tried to check this by completely deleting my Nokia Messaging account and trying to do fresh setup on E52. I was shown Terms/Conditions of service while setup which clearly mentioned that "Purchase of your Nokia phone includes subscription to Nokia Messaging". This was exactly same as you will get on E72.
I continued and finished setup. After setup I logged into email.nokia.com and found that my subscription was "Trial".
 
 

  
I called Nokia Care Helpline to check about this. They said E52 is not having Lifetime free Nokia Messaging subscription. They stated only E63, E71 and E72 have this. But somehow Nokia's own website said something else. I really felt bad about all this and kind of felt cheated. Also I wasn't given Phone with new retail boxes(with Navigation accessories).I was told that such newer retail boxes were not available yet.
But around same time Nitish Kumar bought E52 which had Navigation Accessories.
 
I told Nokia Care Helpline agents that I bought E52 for Messaging related features and not having clear information about Nokia Messaging Subscription was really bad.They assured me that my complaint will be raised with higher level. I checked for few days on email.nokia.com and I still saw it as "Trial"
In all Nokia India promotions, status of service is still very confusing with words as "FREE*" when you look for what * means It is explained as "Nokia Messaging service is available on select Nokia devices only and FREE for lifetime of the phone.Operator and Data charges may apply.Check with you operator for applicable charges.For further information; visit your nearest Nokia Store. Nokia Messaging is currently being offered as a beta service"

I thought "FREE for lifetime of phone" is only for select Eseries phones like E72, E71.

 
Please note that I always found that Subscription Plan never made any difference to Email experience to me , whether it was "Trial" on N82, N97 mini , E52 or "Purchased with Device" like E72. Emails were handled well,emails got to my mobile faster than browser on desktop. My only concern was about being on "Trial" in case it goes "paid" service. I am not sure how Nokia is going to go ahead with this in India.They need to be more clear about their service offerings and communicate to users.Having some idea of Mobiles, services I was able to figure things out and resolve it. But I dont think many users will give a second chance when their account gets deactivated.
 
Yesterday I just tried to check my plan on email.nokia.com and to my surprise I found that , somehow it has got changed to " Purchased with Device". May be my calls to Nokia Care did the trick, may be !!!
 
So I was happy after all this.So calling Nokia Care can help you sometimes :)
 
But I would like Nokia to be more clear and specific about their service offerings. I am still not sure whether this service in India is "FREE" or "Beta" or "Trial" or what else. No clarity is there at all.

Hope someone is listening !

Update : I just found reason why Nokia Messaging thinks that "your phone has been transferred to another person". I found that these issues have been already reported on Nokia Discussion forums since E75 was launched. Basically if you change your SIM(your Number) and try to use that with phone having Nokia Messaging Lifetime free subscription, Nokia thinks that you have transferred your phone and it will stop all push email updates to your phone and cancel account. While this is done to ensure safety of your emails, data, it fails to take into account that same person can also use multiple accounts.
Also if I have password of Nokia Messaging account and can verify that in Email settings, Nokia just should not have any issues. As i found in my E52 that if I change my SIM card, I had to go in Email settings->Account settings. Change Access point(since NM on E52 still doesnt support destinations !)
Even if I do this change I have to put my Nokia Messaging password to verify changes. I am surprised that even after verifying password why Nokia Messaging thinks that my phone is with other person ?
Overall I strongly feel they need to manage things better here as current systems is totally fail, it just doesnt give any helpful suggestions as why all these cancellations are happening which is bad. Since I tried to get to bottom of issues and found out all this via various sources its ok for me. Most other users won't just try things again once it's broken.