I’m on my third 4G iPod 20GB, as of 10 minutes ago. The second one, I got back in October when I dropped the first one on a marble floor. But, last night, it died when it took a header out of my pocket and bounced off the parking lot pavement. Last time I used a mailer and sent it back to Apple for replacement - but this time, I just drove straight to the Apple store. The Genius Bar denizen took one look at it, held it to his ear, and said “I’ll be right back.” A few minutes later, he returned from the back room and handed me my third iPod. It’s syncing podcasts now and reloading music from my home server.
I’ve got to say: I don’t think I’ll ever get an Apple product sans-AppleCare. I’m probably very tunnel-visioned at this point, but I can’t imagine getting this sort of service from another gadget company. Over the past few years I’ve gotten a few replacement hard drives, a new keyboard and assorted keys, and now two new iPods - all covered by AppleCare. I’d say the cost has been covered.
2 Trackbacks
[...] The AppleCare hard sell. The same week I bought my two new Macs, we bought a car and a shredder. In all those cases I was subjected to a doom-and-gloom story about what might happen if I didn’t buy the extended special dance-remix warranty on my new purchase. But now I still have a pot of money that I can direct toward whichever item breaks—or something completely different. Despite Les Orchard’s Ode to AppleCare which made me wonder if I’d miscalculated in this case, I am against buying specific extended warranties. I think I’m better off saving the money and then having it available for whatever breaks. [...]
My Ode to Applecare (and Woe Is My Computer)…
Sadly, I think my G4 tower has a failing processor or logic board. Starting up the computer after it’s been off a few hours has lately been giving me kernel panics (but restarts usually go fine). Running the Apple Hardware Test……