Thursday, February 14, 2008

I have to PAY for warranty repair!?

Come on Apple... You have to be kidding.

I have a iPod Nano. I resisted for a long time but finally got one last year. I must admit I got hooked. I took it everywhere and really did enjoy the experience, until it died. It had been freezing occasionally. No big deal. I would reset it and it would work fine. One day it froze and I tried to reset it. The screen slowly faded out, and the iPod got hot. Really hot. It is completely useless.

I went to Apple's web site and entered my serial number and was happy to discover the iPod was still under warranty. Being an I.T. professional I understand that electronic devices do die. I didn't hold it against Apple. I went through the steps of getting approval to send the device back to be replaced. Then I got to a page that requested my credit card information to charge me about $30.00 shipping and handling! Figuring it must be a glitch, I went to my "local" Apple store, which is almost an hour away. They offered to make me an appointment with the "Genius Bar" for two days later. They also informed me that the $30.00 handling fee applies if the device is more than six months old. I really don't see the point of a warranty if you have to pay almost 1/4 of the cost of the device to get it fixed.

I must admit, it's smart in terms of revenue. The company knows that most people will pay the money to save the need to pay full price for a new device. To make things worse; if you ever use iTunes to purchase music, you'd lose it all if you decide to buy a different music player! You really have no good option to avoid the fee! Yes, I'm paying the fee... But I certainly won't forget this when I think about buying any more of their products! This is a horrible showing of public relations.

2 comments:

Dave said...

They do seem to try and push customers to just buy a new item rather than going the repair route. When Meredith's mini died, we asked about repair, and they basically told us it would cost as much as a new one anyway.

At least the prices are coming down, I guess...

Jeff said...

True, prices are coming down. My problem is technology is also advancing into very tempting items that end up being more expensive! As long as my existing devices last, I don't generally upgrade them. When they end up dying though, I usually end up spending more than the original.