The Day The Music Died

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s true.  For you see, today I took back my iPod for a refund.  What iPod?  Oh yes, I haven’t posted for ages have I?  Well then, let me take YOU back…

WARNING – the following is a very long rant about an iPod and a little about Apple in general.  Please understand I am not a Microsoft fanboy, nor am I an Apple hater – this is just my experience of Apple.

It’s Saturday, 11th December 2005.  Graham has £220 to spare on his credit card, and has been thinking for a while about giving in to the iPod generation.  I always wanted one – not because they’re cool, not because they’re Apple, but because they’re the best.  My first MP3 player was a PC, but it wasn’t exactly portable.  Next came one of my old mobiles, but it wasn’t exactly up to the task.  Finally I moved to a dedicated player, albeit one that played mini CDs with MP3s on.  It worked like a charm for a while, but the problems that plague portable CD players soon reared their ugly heads and so it was replaced by a little Creative flash player.  It works great – apart from the headphone problem that they’re all susceptible to – but there’s another major downside to it.  Storage.  I’m a lazy person, and I have A LOT of music on my PC - it’s hard to decide what I want to listen to, and then copy these off to fill the 256MB of memory I have on the MuVo, and I’d get bored of this selection a few days later.  There’s no simple way of filling it with random songs.  It was only bought as a stopgap anyway.

Now I could afford an iPod.  Yes, that holy grail of portable MP3 players.  Colour screen, photos, movies, iTunes!  No other player came close – some even cost more with less storage space and features.  Madness!  I had been debating it for sometime, and even though one person tried to steer me well clear of buying one, my mind was made up.  Normally I make my purchases online, but something told me to go to the Trafford Centre in Manchester and buy it there.  This, my friends, is where the problems began…

Darren had presents to buy for someone, so off we went.  Traffic getting there wasn’t too bad, but parking in the place was a nightmare – we drove around and around the same complex a number of times, and had to stalk a father and daughter to get a space.  Inside it wasn’t as busy as I thought it would be though.  Straight to the Apple Store, and this was were all the people were.  Hoards of them swanning around the iMacs already set up for their perusal.  Looked around a bit, I found cases for iPods (I’d heard about scratching so I bought one online earlier.  £25 it was, but I wanted a premium case for such a premium product) but no iPods themselves.  Found the counter and the Genius Bar, but no inclination on were to pick one up.  Darren helped matters further by shouting across the store ‘he wants to buy an iPod!’ and ‘where are the iPods?’.  Very amusing.  Eventually I found staff for the store (there were security guards but I didn’t want to ask them – they looked the strong, silent type).  The man asked if I new which one I wanted, which size, which colour, and if I had a case for it (did he know about the scratching issue too?), and with all answers ‘yes’ he congratulated me, and pointed me to the counter were the boxes seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

Seeing as the shop was so packed I was surprised that the queue was so small – within 1 minute I was being served.  Strange looking young lad – quite short.  Then he spoke.  Problem here – loud music + incomprehensible Manchester accent = bewildered Graham.  Darren had to translate for me!  Don’t know why, but he ended up talking about how great working for the shop was, like he was trying to get me to join for the Xmas rush.  I wasn’t having it – I just wanted my iPod and then I was on my way, cute Apple sports bag wrapped around my hand.  I felt sorry for Darren – he wasn’t able to get the gifts required, and then in the returning car journey and then arriving home all I did was play with my iPod.  Well, I love my gadgets.  Out the box, marvel at how small it actually is, bask in it’s beauty before I slam the protective cover I’d already bought for it.  I want as few scratches as possible, and that polished mirrored back is going to suffer!  PC on, iPod in and… nothing.  PC recognition problems – the damn iPod had crashed, the bloody thing wouldn’t respond to anything.  So, only powered on for two seconds and I need to reset it – not a good sign.

I spent hours trying different levels of charge, USB ports and songs, but the crashes and random resets continued.  They even started to corrupt the music already copied to the iPod – imagine if I had took the time to copy 20GB of files to it, then another 5GB on a separate occasion, and it did this?  20GB lost in an instant – not acceptable.  Tried to format the thing with the special software, but no – that refused to format, and rendered the iPod useless.  On the website I found extremely useful advice (sarcastic much?) such as ‘unplug all other USB devices’ and ‘disable USB 2.0’.  The latter involves going through My Computer, disabling the improved benefit of USB 2.0, restarting the PC, logging back in, formatting the iPod (slowly with USB 1.0 speeds), re-enable USB 2.0, restart and log in (again), and then launch iTunes to put music on (it takes as long to do as it sounds!).  Did it work?  Well the restoring did, but it just kept crashing all over again.  Let’s test it on a tried and tested setup I thought, so Lee gladly allowed me to go round to his house where his iPod has synced successfully for a whole year.  What do you know, it worked (apart from the video feature not working for a bit)!  Back home and it worked as well – it was fixed!  Until the next day, when again the problems returned.  Got really fed up and thought there might have been a problem with my operating system, so reinstalled Windows XP on a separate partition and installed ONLY the iPod and iTunes software.  Same problems.  I could have called Apple.  Noticed there was no e-mail support on their site, which is ridiculous!  Even tiny companies can communicate via e-mail, why can’t Apple?  With regards to telephone support, I had 1 complimentary support call to use within 90 days of purchase – after that it would be a charge of £35 per call.  WTF?  That is robbery!  Don’t think I’ll be calling them then!  Time to take it back, but it was now Xmas so I’d have to wait until after the holidays.

Holidays over, Thursday 29th December 2005, and I get ready to return it.  But I still want an iPod, so should I refund it or replace it?  Well, I can’t keep going back to the Trafford Centre so I thought I’d just get a refund and buy it online when the refund came through.  Then decided I’d go with the repair option, and filled all my details online.  But wait – ‘product has no warranty’?  You’re kidding me – I only bought it around two weeks ago!  ‘If you believe you have a warranty, fax your proof of purchase to Ireland’.  They wouldn’t continue to process my repair request until this was received, then it would take a week for either a repaired or refurbished iPod to be sent back.  Yes, that’s right – ‘refurbished’.  Second-hand, in other words.  Don’t think so.

Thankfully Lee came round and offered to take me to the Trafford Centre again so I could get a refund.  I was unsure if I would because it had a 14-day refund policy, ending on the 25th December.  Nice work guys – how can I return it when noone’s working in the shop?  Anyway, because of the time of year the motorway was heavily congested and the car parks were all completely full, with queues going back to the motorway, so Lee parked in the ASDA – just a short walk away.  Back in the Apple shop I was again confused as to were I should go for a refund, so I just went back to the counter while Lee pretended he didn’t know me – he couldn’t associate with someone who was returning an Apple product!  Small queue again, and oh no!  The same guy who I bought it from is in again, and he was finishing with another customer!  I was begging that someone else would come to my rescue, but no – he was free.  Twat.  Here now follows the conversation we had, as accurate as I can remember with no exaggerations.  My responses are in normal type, his are in italic, and actions and observations are in (brackets).

How can I help you?
I’d like to return this iPod.
Da ya pai bi ka?
Excuse me?
Did you pay by card? (Translated Manchester accent to English).
Yes.
Okay, what’s wrong with it?
Well, as soon as I plugged it into my PC it crashed and had to be reset.  Then when syncing with iTunes it kept crashing and restarting – this happened on two different PCs (well, two different installations of Windows, almost the same thing).
It’s probably just the USB cable.
But the iPod itself is crashing – the screen goes black and shows the Apple logo, then restarts.
Hang on – do you want a refund then or a replacement, because if it’s faulty you should just get a repair.
To tell you the truth I do want an iPod, but it’s not easy for me to get to the Trafford Centre – I don’t have my own transportation so have to rely on other people.  I’d rather just have the refund, because I can’t keep coming back and forth should I have other problems.
What computer is it?
Excuse me?
What computer is it?
(I look at him puzzled) A PC.
No, is it Windows 98, XP, what?
Oh, Windows XP (which is the Operating System – not ‘computer’, you idiot).
Alright I’ll just take it into the back to have a look.
(He goes into the back, leaving me standing for 5 minutes)
There’s no music on this.
That’s right.
Well, have you had any music on it?
Yes – I restored it before I brought it back.  I thought I’d save you a job (he didn’t seem to like light-hearted comments.  In truth I’m glad I restored it – he probably would have looked at any pictures I had stored on the device)
Okay, do you have your MasterCard?
(I hand him my card, which he slams into the card machine.  If it hadn’t have gone all the way in first time it would have snapped, no doubt about it)
Was this a Xmas present?
Yes it was – it was for me, but I had to buy it with my card as I had the money for it.
(He checks the contents of the packaging – VERY thoroughly.  At least he knows what he’s doing here.  He then gets a colleague to help him on his notebook which they use instead of tills, then goes into the back again, leaving me standing for another 5 minutes)
Do you use antivirus?
Yes.
Which one?
Norton.
Ah, that’s why.  Antivirus software detects it and will disconnect it.  It’s like a removable hard drive (strange – I’ve got a removable hard drive, and Norton doesn’t have any problems with that, and that holds many other file types than just music, photos and music).  I’ve got McAfee and I have to disable it to sync the iPod (what?  Disable the antivirus software?  I don’t think so – what ridiculous advice.  I wouldn’t like to be on his e-mail contact list – I’d receive so many worms in my mailbox from him!  Oh yes, and Lee’s PC uses McAfee – no problems there.  Remember that fresh copy of Windows I installed?)  The other PC I tried it on only had Windows XP on it and the iTunes software – nothing else installed – and it still crashed (ah ha!  Stumped you now you little runt!)
So I suppose you’d still like the refund?
Yes (duh!  He checks the packaging AGAIN!  He gets to the little Apple stickers they provide as well – get ready for another attempt from me at being light-hearted).  See?  I didn’t even get a chance to use the Apple stickers!
It’s a good thing – you wouldn’t have been able to return this if you had (I scan his face for signs of humour).  Seriously – we wouldn’t have taken it back (he was being serious!)
(He proceeds to put a yellow sticker on the box and S-L-O-W-L-Y writes down information, whilst he gets his colleague again to help him out with the process.  He passed me the card machine but doesn’t tell me what to do with it for another minute)
It hasn’t accepted your card for some reason (he looks at the machine, and realised it has timed out, so he puts the card back in.  What do you know – it works!  I enter my pin and remove the card – he finishes with the yellow sticker and puts the iPod in a huge box with loads of other ones.  Clearly I’m not the only one with problems.  This guy doesn’t seem to understand though – as if he’s hypnotised to love Apple and believe all of their products are flawless.  He throws away my receipt, prints me a new one and hands it to me)
Goodbye (with a little wave)!

Christ, what an ordeal!  This whole process took around 15-20 minutes – what service, eh?  And while I was waiting through all this, I witnessed problems with their products being marketed as simple to use – it has attracted the simple customers.  One woman couldn’t grasp the idea of a plug, whereas another asked which was the best iPod case for her Nano – I noticed one of the two was actually for the iPod 5G with Video.  I had to hold back the laughter.  Thankfully the ensuing drive with Darren and Lee was enjoyable, but I won’t go into that – this post has a theme, and I’m sticking to it!

Back home I decided to look about getting an iPod online, and my options to return it should I not be happy with it.  14 days to return it again, okay, returns only made by courier collection, well that’s good.  What’s this?  I have to foot the bill?  How much?  £40!?!?  What if the same thing happened again?  I’m already out £25 for the case I bought (it’s too late to return that) and then I’d be out another £40 for the courier?  It’s going to the Netherlands?  So, iPods are designed in California, made in China, returned to the Netherlands, and if you need to provide proof of postage then that goes to Ireland?  Why?  I’d probably get charged £35 for the telephone call as well!  When you add up the fact that you basically HAVE to get a case for the iPod because of scratching issues, and that there are companies founded on removing these scratches, it starts to look a lot like a ripoff.  Don’t forget as well that the batteries are non-replaceable – either pay Apple to replace it when it eventually dies (more money, more money) or get it done elsewhere, risking your iPod’s functionality.  All these signs blatantly point out that Apple just don’t care about their customers, all they want is profit.  I know this is true of most companies, but never in my life have I used a company were they try and fleece you out of as much money as they can AFTER you’ve bought their product, and make it so insanely complicated and costly to get problems sorted!  Apple’s main rival is Microsoft – one quick visit to their website and there’s an option for writing in to them, phoning a national-rate number (Apple’s is national-rate too, plus an extra £35 per call!).  I’ve only called Microsoft once and my query was dealt with in minutes – this was actually on a freephone number, at 4am in the morning - Apple’s telephone lines close around 8pm!  Oh yes, and don’t forget Microsoft also provide FREE e-mail support!

I’ll say it again – I’m not a Microsoft fanboy, and I’m not an Apple hater.  But it’s clear to see who truly understands customer service out of the two.  Yes Microsoft’s products are dominant.  Yes Apple’s are better looking and don’t crash as often, but Apple have the luxury of just designing for their own platform – Microsoft have to design for an infinite number of configurations, AND provide support to back it all up!  I curse and complain when Windows crashes, and when the next version of the OS is delayed yet again, and I always will – but at least I can get support easily if I need to.  If Apple stop being greedy and start actually trying to help their customers’ needs, they may avoid a backlash from their users who have sense.

What now then?  It doesn’t look like I want an iPod does it?  Well, we’ll see.  I still wouldn’t mind one that actually worked, but at the moment I’m not impressed with their service should it not.  Surprisingly, all this commotion has led me to unlock the potential of my little MuVo – Creative have made software which, like iTunes, can fill the device with random songs.  Except this has no problems.  This might be a fresh new start for my little flash MP3 player…

Until next time – always check the service options before buying from any company, but especially Apple.