Fuck Apple. iPods Suck.
Fuck Apple. iPods suck. I know that this is a sacrilegious thing for me to say, but seriously Fuck Apple.
Last July my iPod died after 1.5 years. I was throwing my birthday party that night and didn’t have time to research new players/transfer my entire library over to a new format, etc. So I went and bought another iPod. It started being really flakey in the late fall – freezing repeatedly, not loading new music, able to hear the hard drive whirring away, etc. Mid December it finally died (death one). I took it into the Genius Bar at my local Apple store and they gave me a replacement one because I was still under warrantee (although this one would have been refurbished). Mid January this one starts experiencing the same problems (death two). Get another replacement. Early February this one starts experiencing similar problems (death three). I finally made it into the store yesterday and got my fourth iPod. Count right now: three deaths in eight months.
At this point I’m annoyed because I’ve been without music for more than a month in total and have spent a bunch of time waiting around in stores, reloading music, etc. I’m frustrated because I spent good money on something that (from my point of view) has shit harddrives. Admittedly, I may just be extremely unlucky but this doesn’t give me any reason to believe in the quality of any of their other products. We live in a society where technology changes rapidly. There’s no incentive for companies build durable products because then they can’t sell new ones in two years time. I know this and as a customer have seen quality decrease. It really is very likely that you, Apple, are beginning to put out shitty products.
I get home last night and decide to call Apple’s Customer Service line to see if I can get anymore help. The first person I talk to is extremely polite and passes me right through to a supervisor. At this point I’m impressed. Then I have to wait 20 minutes to talk to a supervisor. I explain the situation again. She asks me what I’d like and I tell her – a 32g touch. Before you think I’m being super greedy, let me explain. 1) I don’t want another harddrive product. With three deaths in eight months I don’t trust their quality and don’t want to have to go through this again. 2) I bought an 80gig iPod because I have 50gigs of music. None of the current generation of solid state drive products that Apple has come close to meeting this need (my need). The 32gig is the closest and therefore passable. 3) I don’t care about the rest of the features on the Touch. They aren’t important to me.
Apple’s response is that they can do one of two things for me. The first is to exchange my current “working iPod” for a brand new, iPod classic. Problems I have with this: a) I don’t see myself as having a “working iPod”. I have the third replacement that you’ve given me in four months. I also have no expectation that this is going to survive any reasonable length of time. b) I don’t want a harddrive product! I’ve made this really clear. So you offering to replace my harddrive with a harddrive doesn’t really satisfy me now does it.
The second option she gave me was to upgrade to the 32gig Touch, but I would have to pay the difference between the current 80gig iPod classic and the Touch. I’m now even less impressed: a) the price of the iPod classic has dropped in the eight months since I bought the original one. Why should I have to pay this difference during the upgrade? If my original one had worked, I wouldn’t be here! If they had been willing to have the difference be between what I’d paid originally and the price of the Touch I might have considered it. b) I’m not going to pay extra money for a product that doesn’t satisfy all my needs (i.e. size of memory). If I don’t care about the extra features then they don’t have any extra value to me.
Overall – both of these solutions relied on me mailing the current “working iPod” back to Apple. Then they would mail me back a new one. So their offers to me involved me having to spend the time and money to mail them back an iPod and then spending several (more like 4-6) weeks without music. How is this customer service? Had you told me that I could go into a store and do this directly, I may have considered it. But I’m tired of having to jump through hoops to get a decent product and reasonable service from a company.
The supervisors also made a big deal out of the fact that they were going out of their way to help me; that Apple doesn’t normally exchange one model for another. Here’s my take on this. When you can afford to hand a refurbished model out as a replacement without thinking about the cost, then you are overcharging for your product. When you can do it three times, then you can afford to exchange the product for a different model. This also tells me that these supervisors aren’t truly empowered (despite what they might have claimed) otherwise they should have been able to help me and not just responded with “but we can’t do that”.
I’m now even angrier, so I asked to speak to another supervisor. The next person I spoke to was confrontational from the start. After a few minutes she eventually told me that either I took what they were offering or left them alone.
Anyone out there who’s reading – this is not how you run customer service. I have owned iPods for six years. I bought into the Apple brand because I believed that it meant something about product quality and service. I have experienced three product malfunctions in eight months. I had customer service agents who don’t understand the concept that customers must value what you are offering them!
Apple, you have lost me as a customer. Everyone I know will hear this story. I will tell people to not buy your products because the quality is no longer there and because you’re service is horrendous. I have one more question – is the cost of my lost future revenues and the lost future customers who listen to what I have to say, really worth it? Are you earning so much money now that you can afford to be so callous?
What is the most frustating of all is that I don’t want Apple to get away with their crappy customer service and products. I want to write letters and make phone calls and follow up with people. But all of that requires time and energy, both of which are already in short supply. Its unfortunate that corporate culture has devolved to the point where they know that they can provide poor goods and services because most customers won’t fight back.
Update: I don’t feel quite so bad given this news story that came out today – Possible iPod Battery Defect Investigated in Japan
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my apple I pod is a peice of shit as well…..about 1 yr old and is constantly messing up and it is out of warranty and cant be fixed for free …but apple said if i buy a new product thell give me 10% off my new purchace …WTF so my $300.00 I pod is only worth 30 bucks to apple again WTF ..(not to mention they would refurbish it and get another 150.00 for it)…im burning cd’s again…
did I mention that the last time I uninstalled I tunes it deleated my backup music folder …(it was on my desktop not in my Itunes folder )…..now I have to begin fixing all this Fuked up music ……FUKIN THANX I TUNES PEICE O SHIT………..boy I ‘d like to go postal on those assholes….I think im going to buy a mini laptop to put my music on…..I dont think I’ve ever had windows media player crash, or not be able to locate music that worked yesterday…ive only got 4 gigs of music thank god …..so i really hate it for anyone that filled 30 to 80 gigs……….I AM SICK OF REAPEDITLY FIXING THE SAME MUSIC FILES OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER……damn there are cheap mp3 players that work every time so why is the most expensive and supposed to be the best out there, peices of crap
you are so right on. same thing with me, an ipod touch dies after 17 months due to “corrupted flash memory”. they offer me 10% of a replacement… so if i instead buy a cheap nano, you’ll give me $14 bucks off? i’ll tell those pricks what to do with their 14 fuqqin bucks! a-holes. not to mention all the money, i bough a lot of crap off itunes, have had 3 ipods, a power pc, and now i will never buy another piece of junk off those mother blasters.
apple, you bastids should go make love to a goat…. make that a herd of goats. smelly, horny goats.
I got my iPod Classic to replace my old 4rth generation one recently. What a piece of shit! Only 1/2 an hour of an album will play before it skips to a different one. I’ve taken it back several times, only to be told, “no refunds” and that there is nothing they can do.
Now I find out that Apple has removed the simple TV out cable ($20) and now requires that we pay $50 for a new TV out cable that has a proprietary chip. Greedy mother-humping bastards.
I used to be an Apple fan, but more and more, I’m getting tired of their bullshit.
I never liked apple but I bought an ipod cause I didn’t even know zunes existed, had similar problem ipod classic died after like a month, so I bought the mini one died after like 4 months so I threw em both in the garbage and bought a zune which lasted about a year had no problems with it until I dropped it mad hard. Microsofts customer service is a lot better they offered me a refund or a direct replacement.(try to get a refund out of apple thats is huge joke.) And they threw in a bunch of free stuff when they mailed the new one back.
I have had two 80GB iPod classics which both died after just over a year of use (just past the warranty). Then I bought two 120GB classics, one I gave to my son and the other I used. I have two docks I played the iPod on and a car stereo made for iPod. The iPod 120GB classic I used was bought in August 2009. After a month, it died. I took it to the Apple store in a nearby mall, and they replaced it for a new one. The replacement lasted until November, when I had to return THAT one again to the Apple store. The preppy store associate that helped me kept making remarks about how I was using my iPod. In other words, he insinuated that perhaps I was the one causing the problem, and not their precious shoddy made in China piece of junk. The second replacment lasted until a week ago (Jan. 10). I said that’s enough for me. For the price, I expect the iPod to last at least 2 or 3 years until the battery has to be replaced. That’s okay, because Apple permanently lost me as a customer. I will never buy anything from Apple again. I’m going to give the Zune MP3 player a try and hope for the best.
I had problems with my nano 2 years ago since then i got a Zune and no problems. I suggest buying a Microsoft Zune.
APPLE DOESN”T GIVE A SHIT-
I’ve gone through ipods like toilet paper for the last few years. THe headphone jack goes out, then the files can’t be read, etc. I am now on my third Ipod in 6 months. AND they don’t exchange it for a new one. I normally love apple stuff but they constantly screw people on ipods. It’s simply not a well made product.
Fuck Ipods.Who needs an Ipod when you have CD player.All my music is on CDs anyways and its pointless to put it all on some apple device
sigh … I’ve had my iPod for several months, there weren’t too many problems at first, but then certain songs would just not play, or that would freeze up my iPod or iTunes …
then I erased my iPod to start fresh with only lossless files, now I can only load 5 or 6 albums before iTunes freezes up during the load and erases everything on my iPod.
wtf is the point of 160gb iPod if I can’t even get more than 5gbs on it? I bought this one because my first was stolen, but I will NEVER buy an Apple product again. I commute a lot and don’t want to have to burn shitloads of CDs but if my iPod can only hold 5 albums there’s not even a point in bringing it with me.
guess I’ll to sell it somewhere and switch over to Zune. I like iPods more than Zunes but it doesn’t matter how much I like them if they are entirely unusable.
My dad bought himself a 30 GB 5.5 generation iPod Video on May 2007. One month later, he gave me the iPod as a gift. I loved it back then until January 2008. On January 2008, my iPod dropped 5 ft. from the carpet. From there, half of the screen broke. I was pissed. I couldn’t enjoy it anymore. Movies looked like crap, but the rest of the device was still working. Four months later, I dropped the iPod so much, the front layout of the iPod got released. A few days later, I did something bad to the iPod, that it deleted all my data from the device! I had computer back-up files present on the device. I had a magnet in my right pocket. I put my iPod inside the same pocket as my magnet, while hearing music. When the music stopped playing, I took the iPod from the pocket, see what was the problem with the device. The iPod was frozen. I restarted the device, and it went to the language selection menu, just like if you turned on an iPod for the first time. I selected the language I wanted. I checked if my music was still there. There was nothing! Again, it’s just like if I barely turned on my iPod for the first time! In my spare time, I went to my computer to see if my data was still there. It was gone! I decided to put my music back on the device. It seems that it worked, but it never did. I played the song for 40 seconds. 40 seconds and beyond, the song was playing like if an audio CD was scratched badly! I restarted the device again. It did the same exact thing, the language selection menu, my music was gone again! So I decided to discard my iPod. My first and second mp3 player was a Creative MuVo. I love the old-school non-colored screen interface. The first one didn’t have a screen. The second one has a screen. My second one has features that I enjoyed so much, I slept with it! All it focuses is music, and that’s it. Sound quality is amazing! No software required. It has a built-in microphone, FM radio with FM radio recording, 256 MB (it’s an old mp3 player), it was based on a USB flash drive. It’s a slim device. One thing that was missing was a rechargeable battery, which the device didn’t use. It uses one AAA battery, and it’s powered by a tiny battery pack using a USB port. My first mp3 player uses 128 MB, which it only plays music. Kinda similar to the iPod Shuffle. It uses the same battery pack as my 2nd, and it’s also based by a flash drive. My big brother bought the mp3 player in 2003. He gave me the device when he bought an updated version of my first mp3 player in 2004. The device lasted about 3 years on total. My device stopped working when I was about to turn it on just to hear music in the morning, which happened in 2005. The logic board of the device got burnt. My computer couldn’t read the device. Eventually my big brother bought another screen-less mp3 player in the year of 2005. He gave me the mp3 with a screen. It lasted 4 years on total from 2004 to 2008. In 2006, it started to get a series of symptoms such as back-light blinking in less than one second, etc. In 2007, I fixed the mp3 player by using a firmware update. A few days later, the layout of the mp3 player fell apart. It couldn’t hold the layout any longer. The mp3 player still works, but I couldn’t put the layout back to the way it was. In 2008, the mp3 player got lost due to the process of moving into new homes. My third mp3 player was a Samsung, similar to my first and second mp3 player except it includes a rechargeable battery, it doesn’t use a battery pack, same screen technology as my second mp3 player, and it uses 512 MB. Same features as my 2nd mp3 player. I got it on Amazon in 2006. I never had any problems with it. It lasted until January 2008. It got stolen. The Samsung device was the best mp3 player I ever had in my life! My fourth mp3 player and 1st multimedia device was the iPod Video. My fifth mp3 and 2nd multimedia was from a crappy brand called Element Electronics. I got it on Christmas 2008. It uses a horrible UI, audio files are viewed by file names, not IDv1/2 tags. Audio files are browsed by a file browser. It’s SUPER SLOW to change to a different song. It lags when browsing through different files and folders. Very slow USB transfer rate! Crappy picture and video performance! Videos need to be converted to a way COMPLETElY DIFFERENT format! Cheap ass user manual! The only thing that was best on the device was the sound quality! The features are rechargeable battery, charging via USB, MiniSD support, touch-pad, FM radio, voice recording, music, picture viewing, plays videos (Uses a completely different format!), etc. It last about 3 months (March 2009). It got stolen. That mp3 player was the worst mp3 player that I ever used, but it did satisfied me when hearing music. The device layout is like a wannabe Samsung YP-K3! On March 28, 2010, I got the SanDisk Sansa Clip+, which is my 6th mp3 player, and I just love it! I wanted to go back to the old-school feel of an ordinary mp3 player… you know… just for music… nothing else. Back to the Apple/iPod rant. I just got tired of iPods. They are not unique anymore. The majority of the people at my high school have one, and I just tired of teachers saying “No iPods allowed” Teachers don’t use the term “mp3 player” anymore! There’s even people considering standard mp3 players as iPods! I fucking hate that shit! iPods are just mp3 players! I dislike the iPod Touch because almost everyone in my school have one. It’s just like whatever! I remember the first time people saw one, they were like “Where did you get it?” or “OMG, I want one!” That was back then when people rarely had one. Now it disappoints me! A lot of my friends or random people are asking me to fix their iPods! I had clients that brought me iPods to fix 3 times in a row! I rather get a standard mp3 player than an iPod! Next time, when people ask me to fix iPods, I’m going to tell them to just get a standard mp3 or a Zune HD! Fuck iPods! I’m done with them! Now it’s time for me to get a Zune HD or the Samsung YP-S5. =)
IPODS SUCK BALLS!! they are terrible and all the fanboys and girls look like [edited to remove derogatory term] with these shitty pieces of crap. get Creative mp3 players. wayy better sound quality
Even one of my friends bought the iPad and he says that the audio quality sucks! I still have the SanDisk Sansa Clip+, and it still works good, just that the earphone jack is not working properly. Only the right speaker/earphone works. When I move the earphone connector down, the left earphone starts working. The good thing is that it’s not sensitive. That means I could listen to music with both earbuds (left/right) without interruption. I’m going to send my mp3 player to SanDisk to see if they can replace it.
i have an 8gig and a 160gig and i cant work on both with itunes i really think that software sucks they always lose shit and why do i have to keep a back-up in my pc harddrive or it deletes it in the ipod they change the language of the music or video but you can’t take anything out that easy and they cant do anything important like change the bit rate to save memory and it takes fuckin forever and a god damn day to sync in my 160gig APPLE needs to get with it make a simple better software that is so easy to change the info and bit rate or any different files that it doesn’t play simply before it puts it into it and with the same fuckin name doesnt the website and tv get you a little confused from time to time well trying to remove michael jackson and you get H7DF what the fuck!! and they could make something to simple i wish i could make software to ipods people would be downloaded 1 million a day and saying damn what took so long this is so simple and i can still do this and dont have to keep everything in my harddrive and it sync so fast i wish i had a nerk team and it would be done put email me if you want programs to change the bitrate/ to take files out of the ipod and put them back in pc/ to change the file info etc. FUCK APPLE!!! and FUCK ITUNES!!!!