I feel like I’ve just been pressured by a couple of large Italian thugs to pay their protection racket money. (Note: I am an equal opportunity offender–they could be Cuban, Japanese, Mexican or whatever–it’s not important. )

Anyway, I’ve got an iPod and I love it. I use it on average about 5 hours a day during the week. Mostly while I’m sittng at my desk at work, and often for the morning drive. Battery life is for the most part not much of an issue for me since it’s plugged into the wall at work. But now it’s getting ridiculous. The rumors and stories are true, these batteries they put in the iPod are CRAP. I’ve had it since somewhere around July of last year and now instead of the rated 8-10 hours life i get somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours. Once or twice after charging all night the battery has been dead.

I finally got fed up and called Apple. There is a one-year warranty so I figured I’d pay $5 or so to ship the unit to them, and within a few days they’d ship me a refurb back ground (on their dime) and I’d have a working device within two weeks. No. What happens is you put in a request and they overnight you a “special box”. Whatever. Return shipping is overnight–their dime. Then when you get the refurb unit, it’s also overnighted. This is cool, right? Well, within the first 6 months of ownership, it is cool. After that they charge you $31.99! Now remember, I could’ve paid any other company $5 for admittedly a lower level of service on the turnaround time, but I’m a cheap guy so I’d have done that anyway. Not an option though. It’s $31.99 now or $99 later (when the unit is out of warranty). Bastards!

I thought about it though and since I do get so much use out of this thing, it was worth paying the fee. Then when I got on the phone the guy offers the Applecare plan to me. It’s a $59 extended warranty that lasts two years–from the purchase date of the wearranty, not the unit. Under this plan you don’t pay the $31.99 rape fee and I figure that in another 12-18 months the battery is gonna die again anyway so it did make sense to get the plan. Normally I’m very much against extended warrantees though–and I’m still not quite comfortable with this one.

I swear man, I love the product but Apple just squeezes and squeezes ya. Did I mention that a tech support call costs $49 and a typical out-of-warranty repair order is $200? They sure are pretty vain over there in Jobsland.