Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

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=

Dear Reader,

A lot of people like to complain about bad service, me included. However, I want to give a shoutout to Aaron, the Customer Service Agent for Southwest Airlines, San Francisco, Gate 25, Friday morning, October 12th, 2007. I was stuck at SFO because of weather. Aaron worked with me for almost an hour and finally helped me book out of SJC on Saturday. All the time, Aaron kept a great attitude. This is why I fly Southwest, great service! it wasn’t Aaron’s fault that all flights out of SFO were dealyed, he was just doing his job. However, in a previous encounter with United, I found that gate agents can be real butt-heads. So the next time you are wondering who to fly with, take my advice and fly the “cattle cars of the sky. Even in bad situations, they are nice…and nice goes a LONG way for a stranded traveler.

SWA, you guys need to hunt down Aaron and promote him, he’s great!

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)

=C=