My iPod's broken - right on cue

Once again my iPod is broken. It's about time for it to break, I've had it for a year, so I'm just out of warranty and, like clockwork, it's packed it in.

It's been giving me some trouble for the past few weeks. One morning last week I put on my trainers and plugged my iPod into my ears for my regular 40 minute walk to work. I was extremely upset to find that, somehow, it had been wiped after I uploaded another album to it the night before.

That evening I managed to fix that problem, although it won't auto-updating properly anymore. Then this morning before I went to leave the house, I tried to turn on it on and found that it had frozen. Try as I might, I couldn't make it unlock itself so I could press play. It was stuck. Dead. Frozen.

This is Money Towers is on the very lovely Kensington High Street, which is perfect if you need to pop out at lunch time to get repairs of nature done. But not iPods. In order to get them looked at and confirmed as broken, one has to trek into Oxford Street in Central London to the Apple Store at a SPECIFIC time that needs to be booked online that day. Like anyone with a job, the only time I can possibly do this is on a weekend and - as I'm sure any other Londoner knows - Oxford Street on a Saturday or Sunday is literally hell on earth.

Hopefully, my iPod's condition is not fatal. I'll spend tomorrow morning trying to overcome this latest dilemma without crawling through the mass of humanity that invades Central London each weekend. But if it is I'd like to buy a more consumer-friendly MP3 player. Problem is, according to my techy mates, now all my music is stored in iTunes, they're a different file type and not compatible with any other music player. So I'm stuck dealing with customer-unfriendly Apple forever more.

My colleague Richard Browning swears iPods are over-rated. I'm beginning to think he's right.

Here's some other people cranky with their iPods:

http://www.anti-ipod.co.uk/
http://smashmyipod.com/

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

Comments

[David Smith]

You should have bought a Zen Micro from Costco

[Citiboy]

Hey Sascha, you should check out the length of the ipod queue at the Apple store on Regent Street, it has to be seen to be believed. My nano lasted 4 months, the screen "broke" which they claimed was my fault. The second nano lasted just 3 weeks, it had a software fault and I took it back and moaned like mad to get my money refunded. Now I have a Samsung mp3 which is, er, also at the menders. Perhaps it's time to dig out the Sony Walkman. Funnily enough that always worked. Just can't afford the batteries...

[Adrian, TiM]

I've been recommended the Cowon iAudio MP3 player very highly by tech-geek muso friends ...

http://audiovisual.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/sbs/122701/15617105.html

[Sascha, This is Money]

Thanks for all your tips - to update you, I braved the Apple Store on Saturday and the woman at the so-called 'Genius Bar' confirmed that the iPod had indeed played its last tune and I was a month out of warranty. I questioned her over the cost of having it repaired and was told 'Apple don't do repairs on iPods. The only offer to replace them.' In English, that means your only option is to buy a brand new one. How's that for impeccable customer service?
Ironically, I got home and, after being told I needed a brand new model, it started working again. Two days later, it's still going. Fingers crossed.
When it does (inevitably) go for good, I'll shop around for something more reliable from a company that offers better service.

[Lee]

My Ipod did this when it was two months out of warrantee. Despite constant phone calls and a heated discussion at my local Apple Store they refused to replace or refund. So I sued them using www.moneyclaim.gov.uk. It was very easy to do and only costs £30.

Apple defaulted by not responding to the Civil action within the alloted time of 2 weeks. I have recently settled with them for the full cost of the Ipod plus court costs.

It seems that some Ipods are faulty at manufacture, which renders the warrantee invalid. I highly recommend that anyone else in this boat does the same.

[pradeep]

someone please help me because when i boot it rockbox isn’t on the menu and i have followed all the steps.