[Nuke]

after 6 months of abuse my ipod now fails to operate. the screen is cracked, the hard drive thrashed and i didnt pick up the store sold insurance for a nominal fee of $50 so they refuse to take it back. this leaves me only one option, fool the waranty department into sending me a replacement. this follows in the great american tradition of denying responsibility for ones actions.

i have tried this before when i dropped my 20 gig archos in the parking lot of a pawn shop i was working at during one of our weed breaks. i attribute that failure to being totally stoned and insuffietient *****ing on my part. this ipod i have costs nearly 3 times as much and im not letting it go withought a fight.

hp keeps denying my rma requests stating that i didnt troubleshoot the thing suffietiently. but i know what the problem is, it was abused, dropped, kicked, thrown, ect. a portable device, especially one this expensive, should be almost invunerable to this kind of abuse.  my only option is the dreaded troubleshooting hotline. so this is the final battle, failure here means that corprate america wins. $400 is like a toy to them, for me it represents a week of slaving away for the good of some rich guy.

now does anyone have any pointers as how i should procede?

[aldo_14]

Try not kicking, dropping, throwing or abusing your expensive electrical goods in future?

[delta_7890]

Aye.  Take better care of your ****.  Warrenties are for when the company screws something up, not you.

[Black Wolf]

Indeed. People keep abusing warranties they get shorter and shorter. It's because of **** like this that you now have to pay to get what used to be standard warranties.

[achtung]

If you had bought it at Wal-Mart there would have been no questions asked:D

[EtherShock]

I assure you, we're not all this irresponsible.

Get a flash-based MP3 player next time. They can take abuse. Hard drives will last forever as long as they stay in one place. Lots of iPod owners don't realize they don't need one.

[Nuke]

a flash mp3 player cant store all 30 gb of my music. and if you must know the death blow was done by a kitten, who managed to push it off my coffee table and onto the carpet, the 1.8 foot drop was too much for it to hande.

it is possible to design devices that can survive anything. the us military employs of them. there was a laptop that saved a marines life cause the bullet couldnt get past the keyboard. they have pdas that have thicker armor than most tanks. its not special seecret texchnology, some of it is comercially available for other  ues, construction for example.  you think that they could have imployed some of that tech, rather than using the cheapest materials possible. products become cheaper and cheaper in there desing as buisnessmen find more ways to cut corners. my grandma has a tv thats older than i am, and it still works. buy a tv today and lets see you get 5 years out of it.

with my job as a bike mechanic i have encountered many a 'defective' bike that has an entire montain trail of dirt caked on it on it. if the bike was defective you wouldnt have been able to go off-roading. the things are barely rated for street use. they piss be off, but in the end i fix the problem, hose down the bike with armorall and bill the store 7.50 repair fee anf 5.00 cleanup fee and another 7.50 if its missing a 5 cent screw or something. ususally the whole proccess takes me 15 minutes tops. i figure the hp techs get a similar deal. so really im doing them a favor.

[WMCoolmon]

Tricking out the warranty people isn't going to help  at all with that.

You could also try complaining to apple...who knows, maybe they'll come up with an iPod Rugged, for $50 more, that you can safely take while rock climbing (unless you get crushed by a boulder).

[Thorn]

Or land on one.

[Nuke]

no, i just want a device that can handel the stresses of bus travel, repels cats, and can magically stick to any surface you put it on... thats all i need

funny think is that it never took any damage when i was out with it, most of the times it got dropped it was either being charged or just sitting around doing nothing.

[Thorn]

Then get a fridge magnet.

[Nuke]

and fry the hd, are you mad? besides magnets dont stick to the places i store my ipod.

[Jal-18]

If you want an indestructable iPod, I hope you're willing to pay the couple extra hundred dollars it would take to make it nearly indestructable. (Nothing is indestructable)  Or you could learn to stop being a whiney rip-off and take care of your stuff.  (Oh, and good to know you're ripping off people for a service that you provide at almost no cost to you.  You inspire me to new hights of moral integrity. )

[Nuke]

id be inclined to buy armored versions of portable products if they would make them. but companies see products that dont last as highly profitable. you see this in cars, tvs, joysticks, bikes, blenders, ect. there are companies who are so proud of the quality of their product that they will replace it even if you break it.  im not the whiney rip-off, whatever happened to product testing and quality control. little annoyances like standing it vertically in the dock are bad enough, id never stand a piece of electronics on its smallest side unless it was a really heavy thing (like a computer). tis lunacy. the only way to get anywhere in this world is to step on people. its the best lesson you can learn in a corprate society. as for my repair overcharging, im only following company policy about repair billings, as they make the same as i do. and most of the time it gets builld to the store im contracted with, not the whiney rip-offs that bring stuff back. they will take back anything it seems. i see of people abusing waranties, why should i not do the same.

[EtherShock]

Because then you are no better than those other people that abuse warranties.

[Krackers87]

Originally posted by Nuke
and fry the hd, are you mad? besides magnets dont stick to the places i store my ipod.

Hey moron, a magnet wont fry a HD, thats a diskette

HDs have extremely powerful magnets inside of them that operates the arms that read/write and they can make you bleed out your finger nail if your not careful with em.

HDs are encompased in a thick metal shell aswell that protects the golden disks.

[Nuke]

thats your average pv hard drive, but the ipod's hd would have far less shielding, as far as the magnets being powerfull, they are not, a simple percision induction motor with a shield between it and the platers. the magnets in the actuator are off to the side and behind another shield plate. the disks, which are usually alluminum with a iron coating it doesnt take much to change polarity. and a magnet strong enough to stick an ipod to the side of the fridge would probible be strong enough to get through the shielding.

older drives substitute a swing-arm actuator with a jackscrew and a firm set of rails, which i think would be a far better arrangement when considering the inertial loads exerted on a small portable device.further advances to improve the durability of portable drives would include adding a bearing ring to the outer edge of the disk as well as the internal to prevent warping. other ideas would include a drum hd with heads on the inside and outside wall of a hollow drum, which would be a far more stable platorm for handeling inertia. im sure the engineers thout of all this, but im also sure toe execs said lets use the one that breaks more.

[Descenterace]

A drum hard disk? That's an incredible waste of space. A stack of platters has a far greater useful surface area than a tube.

[Nuke]

not when you consider inproved data resolutions. sure a stack of platters has a great deal of surface area, but for a portable device, that doesnt need to store as much information, i think it would b a good idea.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Nuke
the only way to get anywhere in this world is to step on people. its the best lesson you can learn in a corprate society.

Then there's nothing wrong with what the companies are doing. They're just stepping on you to get a few extra bucks by not making the iPod strong enough to survive another world war.