Wet iPod. Am I screwed?

April 26, 2007 12:00 AM

What can I do or say to increase my chances of getting a replacement for my 5G iPod that's still covered under the Limited Warranty?

Long story short, my iPod went for a swim about a week ago. A long swim, all night long, at the bottom of a puddle. I dried it the best I could, let it sit for a day or two, but it was unresponsive up until this morning. I plugged it into my MacBook and it came back to life, sort of. It gave me a "Very Low Battery" error, and eventually tried restarting itself. I got the black screen with the Apple logo, and then the hard drive stared making some pretty nasty sounds, and after a couple seconds of that I got the sad mac face with a link to the Apple support site. The problem is I couldn't figure out how to turn the thing off. It was stuck in this loop of battery error, restart, fail, battery error, etc. It seems to have gotten itself out of that, but now just sits at the Apple logo and I still can't turn it off.

Anyway, ny actual question is, do I have any chance of getting it replaced with a refurbished iPod? Should I tell them everything, about the water, about how I took it apart and dried it? Or should I just play dumb? I have an appointment at the Genius Bar in the morning so I probably should have posted this a few hours ago, plus my warranty expires on May 1st so I need to act fast...

posted by Venadium to technology (9 comments total)

I'm not familiar with the 5G iPod, but there are ways of manually restarting your iPod. I'm not talking about simply shutting it down or resetting... but on the iPod mini, if you held down two sections of the clickwheel (I don't remember which, specifically) for about 30 seconds, it would manually restart. I used that to coax a bit more response out of my iPod - you could try that and see if it does anything.

Otherwise, I would just play dumb and send it in.

The only thing you'd have to worry about is their 'diagnostic fee'. I'm not sure how closely you've read the terms and conditions of replacing and repairing iPods, but there's a clause that states that if they don't find anything wrong with it, or if they deem that the iPod is broken as a result of your error, they'll charge you 100$ diagnostic fee for examining the iPod and send it back to you un-replaced.

That said, I have had friends who've sent in their functioning but worn iPod for the heck of it before, and even though Apple couldn't find anything wrong with it, they sent a refurb back. I've gotten iPods replaced after dropping it before, and Canadian winters seem to wreak havoc on the iPod, too. I guess the trouble of arguing with the customer isn't worth the price of an iPod for them.
posted by Phire at 12:11 AM on April 26, 2007

Oh, the manually restarting methods can be found with a bit of digging on the Apple Customer Support website.
posted by Phire at 12:11 AM on April 26, 2007

Personally I'd mail it in, just to avoid the inevitable question. I have seen a Nano that was under applecare go through the washer and dryer -- got a mail-in replacement, no questions asked.
posted by churl at 2:23 AM on April 26, 2007

Get your ass to an Apple store.
Get an appointment with a Genius.
Hand them the iPod and act dumb. Just tell them it started acting up and now it won't work. Trust me...they get iPods acting like this all the time.

They will look it over. Try all the manual resets. Maybe even plug it in to a Mac to do some other stuff.

If they declare it dead, they will replace it with a new one. No fee, since it's still under warranty.

Happened to me with my 4G iPod. I left in the glove box of my car on an extremely hot day. Toasted the HD.

But do this before your warranty runs out. Or go online and buy AppleCare for the iPod. You can do this anytime before the limited warranty runs out.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:58 AM on April 26, 2007

Play dumb. They wont fix it for negligence. If they find any tampering it voids the warranty and the Genius bar wont touch it. In that case, they may give you a box to send it in and the people in Far Away Land are more lenient.

I dented my ipod 15 minutes after opening the damn thing; it worked fine for 9 months, but then suddenly died. Genius Bar saw the dent and refuse to service it. I sent it away and Apple sent me a refurb. Happy yeti.
posted by yeti at 6:58 AM on April 26, 2007

Now that I recall: I called Apple, they overnighted a empty box, overnighted it back to them, and they overnighted the replacement. In shipping costs alone, I got my $60 AppleCare's worth.
posted by yeti at 7:00 AM on April 26, 2007

I wouldn't take the chance by acting dumb and mailing it in. If they opt to try to repair it, they'll see the corrosion caused by water and refuse to go any further until you pay for the repair. It's a pretty good possibility they'll try to repair it by replacing its hard drive if it's acting the way you described.
posted by hollisimo at 7:31 AM on April 26, 2007

I think you are more likely to get a replacement in an Apple store than by mailing it in. If you mail it in they are more likely to open it and discover the water damage. If you take it in they will hand you a new iPod.
posted by raf at 9:27 AM on April 26, 2007

If you take it to an Apple Store, and it doesn't drip any moisture or have any rust, you should be ok. Like everyone else said:

1. Dents and bumps are bad.
2. They don't crack them at the Bar, so nothing internal, like the massive corrosion I'm sure is present, will be found until much later.
3. Extended warranties on iPods are good: if they replace this one, buy the extension because then any hard drive failures or component breakage, so long as none of the aforementioned flags pop up, is covered.

An aside: I sat once at the Bar waiting for my appointment and watched a high schooler have a replacement denied because the dock connector and metal bracket around it were rusted from corrosion. The kid just shrugged and walked away, like, "Darn, guess that genius was too smart to fall for it." She (the Genius working) said to me after the girl left: "Yeah, there's no way that iPod just died from hard drive failure. Two of the pins inside the dock connector were completely rusted away."
posted by CipherSwarm at 9:41 AM on April 26, 2007