iPod Refurbished ipods

[lopezmom]

Hi all!
My son bought his five siblings refurbished ipods (4th gen) from the apple store for Christmas. Seeing the good deals there, I purchased one for my husband as well.

We have had nothing but problems. My husband's had to be replaced immediately--it never worked. One of the five my son purchased was inoperable from the start. My husband's was replaced, and worked for awhile, but now is acting up again. We've sent back two more, and now two others are not working. (I have been told they freeze up when attempting to upload, or that they just won't upload.) We've seen the sad ipod face more times than we care to admit.

The owners of the five are between the ages of 14 and 21 (just to let you know that they're not little kids messing up the ipods.) My husband is over 50 and above average in computer literacy (he's a bit of a techno geek.)

I really don't want to be shipping these things back and forth all year (during the warranty period.) Has anyone else had these problems, or are we just extremely unlucky?

I have a nano that was given to me for my birthday last year, purchased new, and have never had any problems with it.

Any suggestions????

 

[devilot]

Has anyone else had these problems, or are we just extremely unlucky?

Any suggestions????

I think pretty darned unlucky. You'll find that a lot of people buy refurbished iPods and yes, also computers from Apple without issues. At least it seems that Apple hasn't given you any trouble in giving replacements, no? Do they give you completely brand new iPods? Or just new-to-you refurbished iPods?

If you (er, your husband) keeps experiencing problems with that iPod, why not ask for a completely brand new one? I think you'll find that you might just get that if you're persistent but calm.

 

[thegoldenmackid]

i bought an "open box/return" 60g 5g iPod last march, i still have it and purchased pro care [which i highly recommend with iPods b/c unlike any other apple product, they replace iPod's on sight, therefore it's not like you have to wait..] anyone. havent had a problem with mine...ill be kinda pissd if i dont...otherwise there goes the 100 for procare.

 

[wmmk]

I :knocks on wooden desk: have gotten an iPod and MacBook Pro both refreshed (not refurbished) from apple stores, and had problems with neither. Total, I saved $1070 from those purchases.

 

[lopezmom]

Apple has been really great--no complaints about customer service! My husband finally called on the current 3 ipods that are not working and spent an hour on the phone trying to work through the problems before being directed to send them back (the boxes came in this morning--excellent customer service, as I said before!!) The Apple rep and my husband both commented that maybe we got a "bad batch." I think they are fixing them-not replacing them (except for my husband's-his is a 40g while the kids' are 20g-it was refunded then I bought another) I was told that fixing them would probably be better than getting other refurbished items as a replacement.
Only 1 of the original 6 ipods has not had any problems. 1 was replaced with another refurb, and is broken again, and 1 was fixed and and is broken again.
I'm really having a hard time keeping straight which are which--but the kids know!
Again-Apple has been super in this--I was just wondering if we are the exception.....

 

[mrgreen4242]

I've bought several things from the Apple refurb store without trouble (couple iPods for family members, AirPort, etc). I just got a 5G and a 2g nano refurb so we'll see how that goes. I'll be buying the extended warranty on both of these iPods sometime this year, though. Hope that Apple works these out for you to your satisfaction, but it sounds like you just got unlucky!

For the record, I've had 2 Apple products out of 12 that I can think of off hand "fail". One was an iMac G5 that had a bum harddrive (Apple sent me a new one 2-day air) and the other was a 1G iPod mini that had a sad face (crappy HDD, I think... they replaced it on the spot at the Apple store). Not the BEST track record, but they've handled them all for me well and they've "stayed fixed" after being dealt with.

 

[rockthecasbah]

I haven't had any problems with my refurbished 60GB 5th gen, it's worked flawlessly from the start. I highly recommend the refurb deals. That is to say, of course you can unfortunately run into a problem as you did, which i'm sorry to hear about, but in general the refurbs are quite a good value and the majority work very well

 

[xfiftyfour]

I haven't had any problems with my refurbished 60GB 5th gen, it's worked flawlessly from the start.

Same here. Was a great deal, and it came like new. Fortunately, never had a single problem - and am very happy I went that route instead of new.

Sorry to hear about your luck - seems like an incredible hassle. Perhaps you should insist that you be "compensated" for such an inconvenience, considering you did buy 6 ipods from them.