[rant]
So about two years ago my parents bought me a 30gb 3rd gen ipod for christmas, with a 3 year service plan. Excellent! It has worked great for pretty much ever. Not quite fancy like a video or tiny like a nano, but it plays music and that's cool.

About a year ago the HD blew. Brought it to best buy, they sent it off, a week later I had the same one with a new HD. Everything is still groovy...

Then mid January the HD died again. Oh well, still under Service Plan so I brought it in, and they did a rapid exchange for a refurbished model.

Three days later I had a shiny refurbished Ipod..... with a fried HD. The *exact same* problem I had with the one I just sent out.

I went back rather miffed, assuming I'd be coddled and given a shiny *new* (not refurbished) ipod- no. They did the rapid exchange thing for another refurbished one. Well that's ok, as long as it works. And I got it, without a fried HD (although i had problems getting it shipped to the right address), but it skipped the first seconds of songs when i controlled it through the dock connector in my car stereo.

Being a good little tech nerd I checked the system to make sure the problem wasn't with the car system, and sure enough, other ipods worked fine. So i brought it back.

They sent it away, this time for service- and it came back "no problem found". Well it turns out they hadn't reported that it was through the dock connector.

So they sent it in again, for service. And it came back "No problem found". well the problem was still there, so they are doing *another* rapid exchange for me, for a refurbished ipod.

But it was my understanding that the best buy policy was 'Junk Out' (meaning shiny new ipod) after 4 problems.

Well. we'll see if this next one they get me works at all. But I probably won't make any big purchases at best buy again.

Nor should you (at least not with a service plan through Geek Squad).

[/rant]

 

Did you ask them about their policy? Cuz I didn't know about that 'Junk Out' policy you mentioned... Ipods are most of the time junk. I wouldn't blame best buy for their service, it looks like they've done quite well managing your returns(except for not reporting the problem about the dock connector). Why hate Best Buy when they've been honoring you?

 

They definitely confirmed with me their 'junk out' policy, but it seems like with ipods at least they are powerless to make any decisions... i had it shipped to the wrong address several times, and in my opinion being shipped a broken ipod to replace your broken ipod warrants a full replacement with a new ipod...

Bear in mind that we're talking about January to June- almost 5 months?

 

I had a similar battle with a string of bad 15gb 3rd gen ones. I had to return it 3 times before I was able to finally get a new one in the box which I just ended up selling I haven't had any issues with my 5th gen 30gb yet. At any rate Best Buys return policy and warranty have gone to the ____ter in the last few years. If you want a solid in store warranty from a larger chain Circuit City still does a great job.

 

not to threadjack, but i just bricked my ipod mini loading rockbox on it.. booted into disk mode and reloaded the boot loader and all is well.. for a better ipod rockbox is way cooler.. next step bigger battery and going to a compact flash instead of the harddrive.. 8gig mini here i come..

 

meh Rockbox still runs like crap imo not to mention it completely negates all the connectivity in the oem firmware. Granted lossless codecs are great but how many stereos work directly with Rockbox? :D If you really want to run Rockbox solidly you should consider just getting rid of the iPod and picking up an iRiver.

 

Amen, brother! Preach it! I recently ordered an Iriver x20 4gig Now, i've got to wait for it get shipped here. =\

 

haha I have 2 iPods and I love them I am just saying the Rockbox firmware runs like crap on the iPods imo. Maybe there have been some huge improvements since the last time I tried it though. I will say though if you the iRivers I have had in the past were pretty solid products. I would probably still rock one if it had the stereo integration