Sunday, January 01, 2006

A Cautionary Tale of iPods

Gary bought me a 40 GB iPod for Christmas last year. I have loved it until recently when it started to skip songs, freeze up and then not work altogether. I took it to the iPod doctor who pronounced it dead on arrival. My warranty expired one month ago. So, my only option was to get a new hard drive for about $250. The cost of a new iPod is $299.

I spoke with the manager because I wanted to express my dissatisfaction that my $400 iPod broke after only one year. In the past year, I have kept in a special case. It has never been banged around or left in the car. It just broke. The mananger responded with:

"well, you should have bought the extra (one year) warranty when you had the chance."


Well, thanks a lot. Is it too much to expect that a $400 product will last longer than one year? The store was filled with people trying to get their iPods fixed and the two people that were sitting with me at the Genius Bar both had one-year old iPods.

So, if you have an iPod, buy the extra $50 one year warranty now before your initial year runs out. Because right at the time when the original warranty expires, your iPod will probably break. They don't make my iPod anymore so I had to get a newer version. If this one breaks, I'm done with Apple forever. It seems almost ridiculous that all the iPods that were around this time last year are now obsolete. And I thought computers were bad!

(thoughts on the New Year tomorrow!)

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