4G 40G iPod Hard Disk Crash - Caused by Plastic?

I tried to search for this issue, no luck. Apologies if this has been asked and answered already.

My 40gb 4G iPod (almost an entire month out of warranty) crashed the other night. The hard drive wouldn't spin up (loud clunking noises), and after a minute or so I'd get the sad iPod icon. I tried resetting by going into disk mode, as suggested on the support page, but as the drive couldn't even spin up that was a non-starter.

This iPod has lived life in a rubberized case and has suffered no serious impacts in the past few months. When the problem began, I was doing nothing out of the ordinary with it (such as shaking, or running, or any motion other than typical usage). I use the iPod every day, or close to it, but I would expect the product to last more than 13 months.

What has happened recently was that part of the little plastic lining around the dock port broke off. This has been happening since I got the thing, and I figured that it wasn't a big deal. However, I believe that what happened was that a small piece of the plastic got inside the case and interfered with the hard drive mechanism in some way. Even if it didn't, 13 months is a ridiculously short period for any modern hard drive not subjected to serious trauma or viruses to die. My 3G model, purchased almost 3 years ago, still works great and my wife uses it every day. It has survived many more significant impacts that the iPod in question has, and it works great.

Anyone else had this problem? Is there a secret program that Apple has to fix it?

BTW, I went ahead and purchased a new iPod today, trading in the old one to get the whopping 10% discount. I also purchased Applecare for it, which is probably dumb.

If this is a big problem, I would like to know what Apple is doing about it.

I have been an extremely loyal Apple customer since the LC computer came out in 1990. I have owned around 10 different computers, and have hooked up several family members as well, so I've been responsible for at least 15-20 purchases over the years. This is the first time I've been disappointed in product quality. Were I not an iPod crackhead (I listen to audiobooks at night to help me sleep), I'd have gone to Apple about this, but I got no sleep all weekend and sleep deprivation won this round.

Thanks for any insights into this issue. If nothing else, I'd sure like to make Apple aware that there was a problem just to save others the headache and $400 for a replacement.