From Elitaste

My ipod stopped working in Australia in February 2009 while I was there with Wale for the Good Vibrations festival tour. It was a huge bummer. Plane flights/bus rides without ipod is not what’s poppin. Luckily I had purchased a $70 3 year protection plan. Many people say these plans are bogus, not worth the money, etc. I tend to agree, but I’d been buying ipods since the first generation and there have been problems since the beginning. See, I bought my first ipod in Atlanta, GA at CompUSA, before there was even such thing as an Apple Store. And because I hadn’t owned a mac product since an Apple PowerMac 7500 in 1997, I purchased CompUSA’s service plan. What I later realized is that their plan didn’t stipulate there had to be anything wrong with the device to return it. They also didn’t refurbish, they just gave you a new one. Pretty ridiculous. What I also realized though is that often times you would need to return the ipod because of a manufacturer’s defect, but that was beside the point. When the ipod photo came out, I went to CompUSA to return my current device for the newer, flashier one. I then moved to LA and soon thereafter got my car broken into and my ipod stolen. Karma maybe.
Since CompUSA had liquidated most of its stores by this point, I went to Best Buy to get a new ipod and bought the protection plan along with it just out of habit. I gave numerous ipods to Wale because he would forget them before an international trip or wanted a pre-loaded ipod and he would get me a new one at Best Buy, always with the protection plan. Up until February 2009, I never used the Best Buy protection plan for my ipod (although I did use it numerous times with a Logitech Universal Remote I bought). I asked for a new ipod, they said they would send it in and either repair it or give me a refurbished one. It got “repaired” and I got it back three weeks later, apparently with a brand new hard drive and motherboard. It stopped working shortly therafter.
I returned it, asked for a new one, got it back “repaired” 3 weeks later, again with a new hard drive and motherboard. Although this time it had a very tiny tiny dot of condensation on the screen, trapped at the surface of the LCD. I pointed this out to the Geek and he said he could send it back in but it would take another three weeks. I said “fuck it” and took the ipod. Everyday the condensation would grow. After a few weeks it became distracting. The ipod also stopped working. I returned to Best Buy, asked for a new ipod and they said they would give me a refurbished one. I told him this was my third time. He said on the 4th time they would guarantee to give me a brand new ipod and no longer try to repair it. So I tried using the refurbished one but although it looked like an ipod, it was some creepy off-brand clone.
So I got to my 4th time and demanded a new ipod. This time at a different Best Buy on the east coast. He said they still had to send it in to give me the credit for the new ipod. I said that’s ridiculous, the guy on my 3rd time told me I would be guaranteed a new ipod on my 4th time. He said because return 2 and 3 were less than a month apart, they only counted as one. Wow. I was leaving for Thailand in 2 days and needed an ipod for the 48 hours of traveling I’d be doing. They told me I could buy an ipod and return it when I came back from Asia; opened with no restocking fee. So I did that and I got a call while in Thailand saying my new ipod approval had come in, so upon returning to the East Coast, I went to Best Buy an hour before closing a few days ago. Unfortunately, I did not have the receipt for the purchased ipod, but that was no problem because with the protection plan and RewardZone, they could look me up like they always do. Oh wait, the entire Best Buy customer directory system was down, no can do. Waited there an hour to find this out. Was told to return the next day. I must say, Geek Squad manager Mike Westcott was very helpful and called me the next day to let me know everything was up and running.
I come into Best Buy and they have to pull Mike out of a sales meeting because nobody else is equipped to handle the task of returning my used ipod ($249) which I was going to buy back from Best Buy ($199) plus protection plan ($49.99) using a gift card I was awarded for the original price of the ipod plus tax in July 2008 ($385). Somehow I made it out of there with a giftcard with $117.89.
Am I happy? I mean, sure, it feels good to have somehow come out on top through this 6 month process. Would I have rather have just gotten a new ipod and saved multiple, lengthy trips to Best Buy? YES! This is not the first time I’ve wasted a lot of time at Best Buy. I know I’m not the only one. This is also not the first time I have fought to prevent a company from not delivering on their promise. Am I entitled to a new ipod if mine breaks? No, unless I spend an additional fee for a service provided by Best Buy in the event something DOES happen. The moral of the story is, If you are persistent enough to get what you want, you will get it.