Oh iPod, we have led a fraught journey but I have high hopes it is at an end at last.

For the past three months, my iPod has been out of commission. At semester end though I was a bit more concerned about passing English 305 than getting my iPod to work. So once the commotion of finals, Christmas and NewYear’s passed, I decided to get down to the nasty business.

My iPod had continually been showing the infamous “sad face” icon, signifying some kind of harddrive problem. After doing some research online, performing multiple resets and restores, I decided to take my iPod to my nearest Apple store location. I knew that my warranty had expired already, but I was willing to pay to fix it as long as the price was reasonable. Someone came up to us and put us in the line right away, but that didn’t stop us from having to wait about two and a half hours to finally get serviced (I am not exaggerating here). The man did not know anything about anything, unfortunately, otherwise he could have saved us a lot of time. Once we finally reached the beginning of the line, the man behind the bar informed us, “Sorry! Your warranty expired last month, therefore we cannot help you. And we don’t do parts replacement, we only do whole unit replacements, so you can’t pay to have your iPod fixed here.”

… What? I know I didn’t just wait TWO HOURS for you to tell me in five minutes that you can’t do anything to help me. Why didn’t it say this online? In all my research online, it said nothing about needing a warranty to get service, or even anything about the non-existence of parts replacements! I was on the verge of tears at this point, so Mike asked, “So there’s nothing you can do?” And the man replied, “You can donate your iPod to the iPod recycle program and receive 10% off of your next iPod purchase! Other than that, you can take your iPod to a third party vendor and see if they can fix it.” “Do you have any reccomendations?” “Just Google ‘ipod repair’ and you’ll find something.” (I am not kidding, this is what he said to us. Thanks for nothing, buddy.)

So a whole afternoon wasted to tell me that my iPod, my precious iPod that had been my constant companion for the past year, was dead. We went home and did some research on other mp3 players, the cost of buying a new iPod and iPod repair sites. Eventually we decided to go with the wonderful people over at iPodMods.com who will do a free diagnostics test to find out what’s wrong with your iPod, then they will give you a quote on how much it will cost. If you decide to go with their service they will then bill you, if not they just charge you the cost of shipping it back. Pretty cool deal if you ask me!

So before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday I sent my iPod in. I received a confirmation email the next Thursday saying they received my iPod and would send me a quote in 1-2 days. Five days went by and I heard nothing, so I emailed them, whereupon they told me to CALL and they would give me a quote. Now, anyone that knows me knows how I dread, hate, LOATHE the phone. I don’t know why, but I really strongly dislike talking to strangers on the phone. The simplest tasks, such as calling my eyebrow waxer for an appointment, encite extreme anxiety in me and I spend hours dreading it. But for iPod, I would do anything, so I called.

They told me that it needed a new harddrive (surprise, surprise) and they would install it for $160. At first I was blown away. On eBay you can find iPod harddrives for like $80. iPodmods.com actually will install a harddrive if you send it to them, but they charge a $30 service fee. So we figured it was safer and cheaper just to pay them to do it. I gave them the go ahead and they said it would be done in 1-2 days and they would send me a notification email when it was sent out.

They charged my card and yesterday it came in!! I was so excited, even though it was nearly 11PM and I needed to wake up at 7AM the next day, I immediately started the process of updating and importing. I think it took about 2 hours to import all 2200 songs, but I went to bed at midnight and didn’t see the result until this morning. I used it today and it’s just like new! It doesn’t freeze in between songs or skip them altogether, and it hasn’t gotten the sick face once.

Apple makes a great product, but their customer service and support is shit. If you own an iPod, make sure you keep that warranty as long as possible or else Apple will fuck you over should anything go wrong with it. But if they do fuck you over, you can always go to iPodMods.com and have them fix it. I was a little miffed about them not emailing me about my quote until I pestered them about it, but they were always there when I called and they were very patient and helpful. But they don’t stop at fixing iPods, they also have this service where you can change your backlight color (rad). They will even buy your iPod from you if you don’t want it anymore.

“Reunited and it feels so good…”