My iPod ate my movie rentals!
Dear Reader,
UPDATE:
I hate it when I am wrong, thank goodness it doesn’t happen often.
Within 24 hrs of reporting a problem, I received an email from Apple Customer Support. They were nice and re-queued the movies for download, reset my counters for DRM and gave me explicit instructions on how to get them back on my iPod. (Which is a good thing because I didn’t realize those menu items existed) Apple did what all companies should do, within reason, they made things right. They still need to fix the *&^%$ bug, but overall I will have to give Apple an A+ on their customer service.
Friday evening I rented 2 movies from the Apple store for my trip home Saturday from Cupertino. Saturday morning, I transfered them to my iTouch (1.1.4) and everything was sunshine and roses. I boarded the plane, climbed to 10,000 feet, whipped out my iPod and watched 1/2 of the first one before landing in Las Vegas.
While in Vegas, I decided to top off the charge on my iPod since i had a few minutes to kill. Something bad happened here and to the best of my knowledge Apple failed to notify me. Since iTunes was already up, my iPod synced and then charged. The only notice I got was ‘iTunes can’t connect to the store’ (or something like that.) which I thought nothing of since I had not yet connected to the airport’s free wi-fi. (That is one of the few great things about flying through Vegas. The food on Concourse C is teh suxor but they have free wi-fi!) Anyhow, I left it charging for a while then packed up and got in cattle shoot B, which is where Southwest had assigned me. Fast-forward to 10,000 feet and I’m anxious to finish the movie, so I pull out my iPod…only, there’s no movie, both had been deleted and the time was wrong too. Now I’m pissed off because both my movies are gone and I’ve still got 3 hrs in the air. Oh well, what are you going to do while in the air.
So today I start poking around. I found this on the random ipod time issue. and the best I can figure, when I plugged in my iPod, iTunes assigned it a random time, that invalidated my movie rentals and they were deleted. (It’s a theory, we may never really know the cause.)
So, I’m out $10. More importantly, this points to the underlying reason that buying anything from Apple makes me nervous. I got in a “twitter-spat” the other day about Apple and how their customer service is horrible. In most cases, Apple’s hardware/software works and works great, that’s what makes them great. However if you have a problem and need to get help, you are usually out of luck. In my case, there is no way to dispute the fact that I didn’t watch the movies. Apples assumes that if I didn’t watch them it’s my own fault because their software could never malfunction therefore if I’m looking for a refund, I’m just trying to rip them off. (I’m projecting here kiddies)
The random time issue has been discussed for a year now, Apple has released several iTunes and iPod updates since it was first reported and yet, they have still not fixed it. c’Mon guys, you are really starting to look like Microsoft here. Fix the dang bug because now it’s costing people (me) money and I’m betting that it’s going to affect other people too.
Anyhow, if you rent movies for your iPod be careful. If thing go wrong, you are out of luck.
UPDATE: I found the “Report a problem” button and have reported both movies and the bug. Let’s see if they respond.
Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=
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Tags: Apple, customer service, iPod, movie
March 11th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
STORIES LIKE THIS MAKE ME HESITANT TO GO APPLE