iPod Frustrations

I absolutely love the iPod and iTunes but I am really frustrated with quality and customer service. Our family owns a 1 40G, 3 4G mini’s and 1 4G nano. The main frustration are with batteries, hard disks and Apples customer service. I know a little bit about these things because I am an electronics engineer and have been in this business for the last 20 years.

The trouble really began with the mini’s. My son has a mini where the bottom face plate (where the connector is) fell off. That face plat is glued on. So I called customer service and asked if they would replace it within warrantee. They said yes so I sent it in. I got it back after about 10 days with a letter that said they were not willing to fix it because it was somehow my fault that the face plate fell off. So I called back and explained that the plat simply fell off because I assume there wasn’t enough glue or something and would they please glue another one on. You have to understand, we are talking about a 3c plastic part here. The customer service rep was somehow flabbergasted with my request and passed me onto a supper customer service rep who said “no problem sir, we will take care of it” I was happy and sent it back again. Guess what after 10 days I got it back NOT fixed with the same fucking message as before. My concern really was dirt getting in there and potentially damaging the circuit. I basically put some electrical tape on it and hoped for the best. So lets review this for Steve Jobs. Apple probably spent about $50 in shipping and processing (RMA etc.) And at the same time they pissed off a customer for life because they couldn’t replace a 3c part. Hello? Earth to Apple, does this make sense?

After the warrantee ran out, about one year, two mini’s died, the one with the tape on it and another. The problem is that you can’t tell what the problem is, the hard disk or the battery. Now do you think I was going to call Apple? No No No. I took apart both broken mini’s with the help of certain web sites I found that one had a dead battery and one had a crashed hard disk. In the end I made one mini that worked. I found 4G hard disks on ebay but didn’t think it was worth fixing. After all I have a missing bottom face plate that Apple can’t fix. I now have one working mini and one mini for spare parts.

Moving onto my 40G iPod, now three years old. It died recently for no apparent reason. Probably battery but again can’t be sure with Apples troubleshooting guides. I followed Apples troubleshooting guide and there is really no way to tell exactly what is wrong. So now I have a $500 paper weight and as you can tell I’m afraid to send it to Apple.

Finally, I bought a flash-based nano and am happy there is no hard dish in it. The screen is all scratched up – that happed in about two weeks but apparently Apple knows about that. I assume when it dies (right after the warrantee expires) it will be battery.

The problem is that these iPods should work for 10 years don’t you think? I’ happy that Apple is making a fortune on iPods but they have to work past one year. Also, note that I don’t abuse these iPods. I travel on business so the pod mostly stays in my brief case.

Apple you need to seriously work on these issues. You’ve got to know these tiny hard disks and batteries suck and won’t last. You should at least have some return policy for these useless dead products. You actually might learn something. I really don’t want to own an iPod museum.

I know why Apple won’t open up iTunes. It’s because people will flock to other MP3 players. Apple, you make great product. Please get your shit together!