I just dropped the following letter in the mail....thought you'd all appriciate it.
Steve Jobs
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
Mr. Jobs,
I am writing to you to express my extreme disappointment with both the new iPod Classic, and with Apple as a company. I have been a loyal supporter of your products for years, and have had an iPod in my pocket everyday since before the click-wheel was introduced. Over the past five years, I have upgraded my iPod almost annually as you added new features. When the 160GB model was announced, I called the local Apple Store daily, and bought one the first day they were in stock. It was my fifth iPod.
The problems with my new iPod wouldn’t start for a few hours, but the disappointment was immediate. I have close to 35,000 songs on my computer, all with album art, which take up 150 GB on my hard drive. The main reason I bought the new iPod, was that I would finally be able to carry all of my music with me. I was shocked and let down when I saw that the iPod Classic, when formatted, only holds 148 GB.
I understand fully that these machines need software to work, but never has an iPod (remember, I’ve had five) had so much of it’s capacity used up before a single song was placed on it. I know this iPod has more features than past models, but the new iPod Nano has all the same features, and somehow manages to have it’s software and music contained on a drive that’s 33% smaller than the amount of space the software alone is taking on my iPod Classic.
As I said, I was disappointed, but I wasn’t frustrated or mad yet; that starts about now.
At 1 second per song, my collection took about 12 hours to load on to my iPod. When it was finally done, I hit eject, and got my first notion that something wasn’t right. It took almost ten minutes for the iPod to eject. The next day, I made some new play lists on my computer, and hooked up the iPod to transfer them over. It took five minutes for my iPod to show up in iTunes, and then the problem started. The problem, is that while iTunes and the iPod work fine when they are apart, when you connect them, nothing works.
When my new iPod is connected to my computer, the entire system freezes for about two minutes, then it works for 20 seconds or so, then it freezes again for two minutes, and so on and so on for as long as the iPod remains attached. I own three computers, and experienced this exact problem on all three. Then I called Apple Care.
The first night I was on the phone for 45 minutes before anyone answered. The gentleman I spoke with had me try a few things, and in the middle of one, hung up on me. I called back immediately and got a recording saying it was after business hours. The next day I was on the phone with another person, who after an hour of trouble shooting, told me I had to format my iPod in order to fix the problem. I told him it took 12 hours to fill, and asked if he was sure this would solve the issue. He said he was positive.
Twelve hours later when the iPod was full again, I was back on the phone, with the same problem, and double the frustration. I spent an hour talking with a product specialist, who said I needed to go to the Genius Bar and have them look at it. He booked me an appointment for two days later. It was during those two days that I discovered a forum on Apple’s discussion boards.
The forum I am speaking of can be found here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5329697
If you take the time to look at it, you will find, as of this writing, over 100 people complaining about exactly the same problem I described above. I printed out the forum and brought it with me when I went to speak with the “genius”.
I arrived on time for my appointment at the Genius Bar, and had to wait 45 minutes before they would see me. When they did see me, the first thing they told me was that the problem had to be MY computer. I told them that the problem was happening on three different computers. Then they told me that the problem “must be a PC thing” (way to stick with the company line) however when we connected the iPod to the Mac at the Genius Bar, it crashed that one too.
Next, the “genius” told me that I was the only one having this problem, and it must be a defective iPod. At that point, I showed him the print out of the forum. His response, was that all the people on the forum were “unlucky” and all got defective iPods. He insisted I take a replacement, and promised it would not have the same problem.
After another 12 hour filling period, I was left with a new iPod doing exactly the same thing the first one did.
At this point, I got back on the phone with Apple Care, and after another hour of unsuccessful troubleshooting, I was told that the problem must be a bad file on my hard drive, and the only way to fix it would be to format the iPod and add songs one at a time until the problem started. I said that was ridiculous because the same files worked on my other iPods, not to mention the fact that to do what she was suggesting with 40,000 songs would take months. She said it was my only option.
Rather than taking her “one song at a time” advice verbatim, which if I had I would still be in the middle of, I formatted the iPod and filled it from a friend’s library, with totally different tracks, and of course, this fixed nothing.
You should also know, that the same woman that suggested the above, at one point also told me that my problem was that I had too much downloaded music (I have none) and then changed her mind completely, and said I had imported music off of cds released by too many different record labels. Later, another tech said that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard.
Anyway, after the fourth re-fill, I got back on the phone to Apple Care and was told by a very rude technician, that there are always problems with new products and I should just wait it out. I told him that was unacceptable, and was transferred to customer service.
The person I spoke with at customer service, told me again, that I was just unlucky and had somehow gotten two defective iPods. He offered me a discount on an iPod Touch, but as I do not want a replacement MP3 player with 90% less capacity than the one I bought initially I turned that down. He told me he would understand if I returned the product, but implored me to try one more unit, again insisting that I was just unlucky. After thinking it over, I gave it a try, and now, after a fifth 12 hour fill up, I am sitting here with a third iPod with the same problem that the previous two had.
Just to recap:
1. I’ve had three different iPod Classics, all with the same problem.
2. I’ve tried them on 5 different computers, both Macs and PCs and had the problem every single time.
3. I’ve tried loading 2 totally different sets of music and still have the problem.
4. There are hundreds of people on-line complaining about the same exact problem, yet every single person I spoke with at Apple insists they’ve never heard of such a thing.
5. I’ve spent 7.5 hours on the phone with Apple Care, 2.5 hours at the Genius Bar and 60 HOURS refilling these iPods over and over again.
I will be going to get a refund sometime this week, however I will get no satisfaction from it. I did not spend literally 10% of the last month (3 full days) working on this for any reason other than the fact that I really wanted the iPod to work; the fact that in the end it didn’t makes it all the more irritating. I am very upset with Apple for releasing a product that clearly wasn’t ready, and for treating the consumers who rushed out to buy it, like beta testers, rather than customers that just handed over $400, plus tax.
In closing, I can promise you one thing. Unless I get some kind of formal apology, and acceptable explanation for this mess (can’t imagine what it would be) I will never buy another Apple product again.
Signed,
An ex-loyal Apple customer.
