I feel obliged to share my frustrating visit to an Apple Store yesterday. I invite you all to heed a warning regarding their customer service. I've got a bit of a grudge now, despite everything being resolved.

Yesterday I took my broken iPod into one of their 'Genius Bar' appointments. Anything but a genius idea if you ask me when you have to make an appointment to get a product diagnostic check. Anyhow I attend this appointment with the view to getting my battery changed. The iPod won't hold a charge but works perfectly on the docking station.

The advisor who served me "tested" my iPod and advised it was a hardware issue and the whole iPod required replacing. I was even made to listen to my iPod's chest... from which no noise was coming from. I was advised that the hardware must have completely failed that day and it would not even work in a docking station now. Perplexed by this, I listened to the lady's sales pitch for a new iPod touch, etc etc and said that I was think on this. To just get a replacement of my current model would be £120.

Five minutes later I found myself plugging my iPod into an HMV store's model docking station where my iPod again worked perfectly. This infuriated me and a quick return was made to the Apple store. Where I was then told I would have to make another appointment (hah!). I was also then advised they didn't do battery replacement's despite the website advising they could and the cost involved. I had even phoned prior to going to check this with the in-store team themselves. So I found myself with two versions of events.

On my return a couple of hours later for my new appointment it took the recounting of these two tales and expressing the fact I expected some concrete answers to then be leaving the store ten minutes later with a complete Pod replacement for only £40... the price of the battery replacement advertised on the Apple website.

And here ends my story. Whilst I don't mind a sales pitch, poor technical advise and outright deception makes me rather cross!

i never got in to that hole i pod thing i like mp3 players i have had the same one for 7 years now no probables , but after 7 years i now have to go look for a new one all my f avert song i have to find again

Don't be so hard on Apple, they're one of the few companies these days supporting slave labor employment in China and mass producing products to the tune of tens of millions of units that are keeping masses of consumers in the West completely oblivious to the disintegration of the monetary and financial systems, the very underpinnings of our "civilization", not to mention everyone's standards of livings. They're putting the bliss in ignorance globally with some really cool electronics. Where would the U.S. economy be without the market cap of this company buoying the DOW (and subsequently the U.S. balance sheet, the IMF, etc., etc.) thanks to hedge funds representing the ignorant masses pumping the stock price with unlimited, essentially free, continually depreciating "money"?

They're partially responsible for holding the modern equivalent of the burning of Rome together for a while longer.

If you love your iPod, die for it. It is your duty as a consumer in the midst of the decline and fall of Western civilization.

I love you man, your attitude shines on these forums and one of fewer old skool'erz still around. Good luck with those cunts who just want to separate you from your capital and box your ears with planned obsolescence.

This is a rant thread, right?

So refreshing!

Haha, loved the response!

Apple now has more cash, and essentially leverage through liquidity and credit, than the United States government.

Cristiano Ronaldo has been pledged as collateral, for emergency liquidity support from the European Central Bank, by Spain's struggling savings bank Bankia. Real Madrid borrowed tens of millions of Euros in transfer payments from Bankia to secure Ronaldo and Kaka. If (when?) Real Madrid can no longer service these debts, both the team and Ronaldo will belong to the ECB through Bankia, if Bankia even survives. If Ronaldo can't play football or sell underwear anymore, tens perhaps hundreds of millions of Euros will be written-off, socialized, absorbed by the average schmuck and their children through some method of taxation or "austerity".

The Ponzi schemes, failing credit and grossly overpaid risk that are now the underpinnings of our modern "civilization" are failing before our eyes, the matrix has gone full retard. A football player literally keeping a major bank "liquid" and afloat as human "credit". Un-fucking-believable...

Buy gold, silver, food stores, things you need/want and can afford, get out of debt if you have it. Prepare for the eventual rising real cost of credit (if it's even available), the deterioration in your standards of livings and purchasing power through currency debasement, our manipulated indoctrination into debt peonage and centralized neofeudalism if the elite have their way. Live well but within your means, tell your friends and family you love them all the time, prepare for tougher days.

That's enough rant from me and I'm sorry if this is unwelcome, sounds patronizing, like tinfoil hat blathering or none of the above makes any sense. It is meant with the best of intentions and as food for thought at least.

In the meantime I love my iPod and Macbook Pro every day.

Sorry to post off topic again, I have a bit of a habit...

Anyway, with the continued disintegration in the Euro Zone (politically, socially and financially) I thought this might serve as an interesting addendum to my last post if anyone cares. As Bankia has officially become a zombie bank who's only hope is an ECB liquidity injection on a massive scale (read German worker/taxpayer-funded bailout), some Spaniards and/or footy fans might get a kick out of this.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bankia-ba ... ns-ronaldo

If you are Spanish and have deposits in any Spanish bank for that matter, it might be prudent to get your money the hell out of there and either stick it in your mattress or better yet, buy gold with it. You have been warned (if in fact there are still any folks who read this site and have any capital risk on the table).

Welcome to Greece 2.0

*I* have more cash than the US government! Think everyone on here does.
Even though Melanie's trying hard to be the bankrupcy of me w/ all the awesomeness she's tossing at us

Anyone here with a multy million dollar debt? Anyone???

Oh btw, for more apple rant check my itunes thread :p

Poor service at the start but at least they sorted out your porblem in the end.

Sorted is a big word XD

They gave me song credits for the tracks I wanted but it didn't get me the booklet... And next time I want a song I'll still have the same problem

ranting about Apple? i can join in:

my daughter gave me an iPod shuffle some years back. i even owned an iMac computer at the time (collecting dust now) and you'd think everything would be hunky dory, right? nope. my iMac, more than a few years old, wasn't compatible with the iPod. it did say so in the tiny print that came with the unit. but i didn't see that until i'd opened the box. anyway, i thought maybe i'd figure a way around that at some point... like update my OS. turns out i couldn't do that... my Mac was just old enough that it didn't have a DVD drive (just cd), which i needed to install a newer OS. i'm majorly p.o.'d by this time. can't even enjoy my lovely gift (well, the sentiment was there). my daughter kindly offered to use her PC equipped with iTunes to set me up with some music on the player. that was good for what... about a year or so... then the unit went kaput on me a few times. pretty dead. under warranty or not, i was sick of the thing.

now i have a non-Apple mp3 player AND a PC. everything works fine.

the moral of this story is avoid Apple at all costs (though i occasionally grab a song or something at the iTunes store when there are no alternatives).

peace out

Gah, sucks right? Love open source. If something's shitty there's always a geek somewhere who's made a patch and uploaded it somewhere for free!

On topic:

My girl just had to spend over HALF AN HOUR on iTunes to manage to download IDKHTLH for me, it won't take either of our credit cards but luckily I had some song credits left from their last &^*% up.

And now it turns out not even to be an MP3 so I can ONLY play it on quicktime, not on the go or over my speakers! (as I use my speakers plugged into my mp3player or phone to listen to music at home).

you can convert that AAC music file (which you downloaded) to mp3 in iTunes so you can play it elsewhere. just single left click to select the song in iTunes, then right click to bring up the menu.... there you can select Create MP3 Version. at least Apple did *something* right.

that should work! good luck....

Only I don't have iTunes!

And I am NEVER getting that explained to my girl, took her half an hour just to purchase the song for me.