So, a while back, my “old” (which is to say, about 3-year-old) iPod photo’s clickwheel stopped working. As far as I could tell, the hard drive and software and logic components were all fine, and responded normally when hooked up to a computer. As an external hard drive, it worked just dandy. But with an unresponsive clickwheel, its utility as a portable music player was rather more limited. When I finally took it down to the local Apple Store’s “Genius Bar,” I was told that I could pay some unholy sum to get the thing repaired, but this would end up costing almost as much as just buying a new one—and indeed, I could get a discount on a new one if I sent this one back for reconditioning. As it happened, I’d recently won a Nano in a random drawing anyway, so I just hung on to my poor iPod and plopped it in a desk drawer, figuring an extra 40g external drive might come in handy some time.
Well, I was futzing around this evening and pulled it out of that drawer. And I figured: “What the hell, it’s bricked and out of warranty, I’ve got nothing to lose by tinkering with it.” So I grabbed a tiny screwdriver, pried it open, and started sniffing at the innards. It took all of a minute to notice that there was a tiny piece of ribbon circuitry at the base of the thing that had come unmoored from its connector, so I grabbed a tweezer and wedged it back in, then snapped the casing closed again. Voila, good as new!
Once I got over my pleasure at having a working iPod back with so little effort, though, I got a bit annoyed. It had been obvious when the problem first appeared (after I tried resets and other such things) that it was basically sound, but that there was some sort of hardware issue with the clickwheel. I almost just popped it open to check for loose connections back then, but I figured it was better to go ask the experts, on the off chance I could make it worse by poking about. And I suppose, like an ass, I assumed that it couldn’t possibly be that simple, because the experts were talking about sending it back to the plant for costly repairs. But now I find myself thinking: If these guys were remotely competent or informed about their gadgets, surely they must have known that there was a high probability this was a simple loose connection that could be solved with the five-minute surgery I just performed, and would have done for myself a while ago if I hadn’t deferred to the local Genius. So I want to register a minor WTF here: Have they decided that once it’s out of warranty, there’s no reason suggesting incredibly simple and obvious procedures that might fix an expensive piece of gadgetry if you look as though you might be willing to buy another, newer expensive piece of gadgetry?
15 responses so far ↓
1 Sandy // May 23, 2007 at 12:06 am
Everything these days costs a fortune to repair. A Denon tape deck was quoted me as $180 minimum just to ship it back and have them crack it open.
Partially it’s a sales gimmick as you note, partially it’s the natural consequence of integrated design. There are fewer things that are fixable like you did.
That being said, yeah, if they had a real certified repair guy on staff he should have been able to take a look at some of the obvious things and at least told you. My feeling is that unless you’re taking it to a 3rd party service company (look them up, there are Apple Certified techs in the area), you’re unlikely to get that kind of service.
Of course if something integrated goes wrong, it’s only another $50 to get the latest that does all of $foo too! C’mon man, you known you wanna…
2 Matt Z // May 23, 2007 at 12:30 am
Have they decided that once it’s out of warranty, there’s no reason suggesting incredibly simple and obvious procedures that might fix an expensive piece of gadgetry if you look as though you might be willing to buy another, newer expensive piece of gadgetry?
Wait, apple would rather sell you new shit than repair your old shit…the horror
3 Sam // May 23, 2007 at 1:18 am
Quite likely. I had a similar problem with my iPod, and gave the device to my friend who works at an Apple store. He fixed it under the table for free, in about an hour.
4 Timon // May 23, 2007 at 4:22 am
That was a common problem with a couple of earlier generations of iPods, which adds to the smart of the genius misnomer (!). Aren’t you at least pleased you got to flex your hardware hacking muscles? You can get further insight into your question to Apple by turning the iPod Photo into a pan-format video iPod with Podzilla. It might be rephrased: “Apple, why didn’t you train your staff to fix a known minor problem on hardware that has the capability to support many of the same functions as your latest-generation expensive upgrade, at no cost to the user?”
5 Chris // May 23, 2007 at 10:09 am
At least if the journalism career doesn’t work out, there’s a gap in the iPod repair market waiting for you…
6 Nick // May 23, 2007 at 10:24 am
Honestly, at least in my experience with laptop repair, a loose ribbon cable is a fairly unlikely reason for the problem. Those ZIF connectors tend to hold them down fairly well. It’s much more likely that there would be a problem with the input device, or the cable itself, and that would be a legitimately costly repair.
The Apple guys were doing exactly the right thing by suggesting that there might be a surprising high cost to the repair. If it ended up being less expensive, that’s fantastic, but you need to prepare the customer for the worst so as to avoid making them even more pissed in the future with a high bill.
7 Barry // May 23, 2007 at 11:58 am
I’ve played the game of paying to do major repairs on an old computer, and I’m now heavily biased towards replacement. I spent well over half of what a newer and far better one would have cost
8 Julian Sanchez // May 23, 2007 at 11:58 am
Well, fine, but this was still a 5 minute procedure, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. Shouldn’t they at least suggest checking before throwing up their hands and saying “buy a new one”?
9 Jason // May 23, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Apple doesn’t repair iPods at the stores like they do with other computers. They mail it to a repair center. It’s more economical when spread out over a gajillion ipods, but less so in your particular case.
10 Elf M. Sternberg // May 23, 2007 at 2:57 pm
The website ifixipodsfast.com has a collection of videos that show you the most common repairs you might need for your average iPod. I had the headphone ribbon die on my headphone recently. I bought a new ribbon off eBay for about $20, watched the video, and proceeded to make my way through the procedure. Like you, it took about half an hour, was not rocket science (although at my age I needed the strong reading glasses to see those obscenely tiny ribbon connectors), and sure beat the heck off that $160 price Apple quoted me to “refurbish” the darn thing.
11 Laure // May 23, 2007 at 5:27 pm
As an aside, I was at the “Genius Bar” recently and the customer to my right was there because her iPod had reached a state of meltdown. The customer service agent/genius took the iPod into the back room. When he returned about 5 minutes later, he explained to the girl that she should get her files off the device as soon as possible as it would likely not function for long. “But what did you do back there!?” she demanded. “I took it to the other Apple store and they could not help me. They said I needed to bring it to this store.”
“Well,” the genius said with a 20-something-slacker smile, “I just hit it against a table.” The girl looked rather surprised. “Yes, he continued, “that really does seem to work a lot of the time. Just give it a nice firm slap.”
So next time, that might be an option you could try, you know, before the screwdrivers.
12 Dave W. // May 24, 2007 at 5:48 am
I have seen lots of iPod repair stores (or at least banners) sprout up here in Toronto this past year. I don’t think the idea is that you can’t get your iPod repaired — Apple just doesn’t want it done on warranty. It would be nice if they would sell unwarranted iPods so us consumers could get a feel for what the “warranty” component is costing us at retail. But iPod’s built in ip affords it a monopoly position, so that won’t be happening anytime soon. If anything, they will probably crack down on the repair shops at some point (maybe they have in the US?).
Also: 40 lashes w/ w. noodle to you for buying in to DRM, Mr. Sanchez.
13 Julian Sanchez // May 24, 2007 at 8:50 am
iPods will happily play DRM-free MP3s, you know…
14 Anonymous // May 24, 2007 at 10:30 am
iPods will happily play DRM-free MP3s, you know…
No, I didn’t and this is very useful info to me because I go through crappy off-brand players at a clip of about one every six months. I always assumed iPods required some kind of encoded coyright clearance that my audio-recorded and/or ripped files may or may not have.
Right now I have a 4 gig piece of crap where you can’t really move thru the directory structure. I have to listen to the playlist in order, unless all the files are up at the root level. Modern problems. Grrrr.
I can’t wait til it breaks. I’ll try an iPod.
15 Jon H // May 25, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Julian wrote: “Well, fine, but this was still a 5 minute procedure, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. Shouldn’t they at least suggest checking before throwing up their hands and saying “buy a new one”?”
Would *you* suggest that to the average iPod owner who is a complete stranger? If you think about it, for a moment, you’ll realize it’s not practical.
That’s why I always look at the vendor as the last resort. A techie-oriented forum or newsgroup would be more productive, because there’s less of an assumption of technical naivete.
For an out of warranty device, I’d probably only go to the vendor if there was a chance of getting a replacement.
The “tiny repair == buy a new one” is nothing new, nor specific to Apple. I had a Sony discman back in highschool in the late 80s, which needed a simple repair: a 2 cent piece of plastic which gripped the threads on the drive screw broke, so the laser head wouldn’t move. Getting it fixed would have been prohibitively expensive. I wound up fashioning a replacement out of part of the metal screw top of a soda bottle. That kept it working for a few more years.