My Problem with Apple
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at 7:35AM I am apprehensive about writing this because in my experience, anyone who has anything negative to say about Apple seemed to get attacked by the cult of mac. These two posts: one and two, are great examples. I decided not to be terrorized and write about my experience with the Ipod. For the record I have a 30GB Black 5th Generation Ipod.
One Sunday, while watching the Saints prove
that maybe one good thing came out of Katrina, I decided to upgrade to Itunes
7. Itunes 7 also makes you upgrade
the firmware on your ipod. The firmware upgrade
did not work and my ipod crashed. I reformatted and tried again. It seemed to have worked. I
started adding songs and the ipod began making a weird click noise. A short time later, a sad ipod smiley face showed up. I reset and the sad smiley face went
away. The next day the the thing locked
up. I went to apple's
website and followed the directions on returning an Ipod that was under warranty. I
was a little dismayed that I had to send my Ipod in without getting a replacement,
unlike my dell juke box mp3 player experience. The DHL guy
called me 2 days latter and told me he had a package from Apple, but it was
shipped to the wrong address. I had
accidenly reversed a digit in my address when giving it to Apple. He left the package on my porch and I mailed it the next day. The following Monday I had just watched U2 and
Greenday play at the Saint's home opener and left my stadium seat to grab a
beer. While waiting in line I checked my
email and saw that Apple had received my Ipod and they would notify me
when sending it back. For the next two weeks I waited in eager anticipation. I never got a response so I decided to log into Apple's website. It told me that there was no problem found
and that they had sent my Ipod back. Apple
did not correct the address and so DHL had deemed it undeliverable and returned it to apple. I called Tech Support and a nice lady told me
she would send me my Ipod.
I heard
nothing for a week and called tech support again. I explained my situation to another nice lady
and she told me that she would send my ipod to be looked at again and then send
it back to me.
I heard nothing for
another week and called Apple. A nice
man explained that they had looked at my ipod and that it was physically damaged. It was dented in. I did not take pictures of my ipod before I
sent it in but did not remember any dent. I talked to his supervisor. She told me that they would not fix it but I
could buy a referbuished one and get a one year warranty. She also told me I could take my ipod to an
Apple Store and the Techs there might replace it. The nearest store is
Houston
, 4 hours away. She also explained that they had pictures of
the damage which she would send to me. Both the manager and the tech explained they could see the damage from
the pictures.
2 days latter I got my Ipod back with no pictures. There was no visible damage at all to it. You can see the pictures yourself. Check out my Flickr account. If you rub your finger along the
back at one small point you might be able to feel a dent. I am really not sure, but again you can't see
anything. Apple was even nice enough to
include an arrow to "this dent". Without the arrow, I would never have found it. I think it is pretty crappy that Apple will not repair products that are under warranty. I could have purchased my Ipod with the damage already to it and would never have known. There is no way that the Tech Support could have seen the damage from the pictures.
My next course of action is to send the Ipod to Atlanta where my freind Juan will take it to an Apple Store. I having a feeling that they will replace it. Even so, I am done with Apple.
The real kicker was that in December I was going to buy the 80gb Ipod. Looks like the Creative Zen or Zune is the
way I will go. To the Buzz Out Loud
crew, you were right and I was wrong. To
all those that have not drunken the apple cool aid, be aware that Apple does not
seem to honor their one year warranty. Jon
Lech Johansen, looks like I will be purchasing your product. If the Government wants to come after me for
violating the DMC, I have a couple of Internet Tubes in my backyard for
a quick escape.
Reader Comments (5)
Did you retry talking with Apple that you do not think there is a dent?
And why should Apple repair a product under a warranty that is broken due soley to the user breaking it? If you send it through a washing machine its Apple's job to fix it?
And how many different ways can you misspell iPod in one article?