Originally Posted by Chrismcfall:
“Yeah, I suppose. My brother once sent back an iPod mini for a new battery, and it got sent back with a bit letter saying the reason the battery was cack was because it had been dropped a few times! Oh, so thats our fault that apples batteries are rubbish?”
The engineer has to have a reason for saying that the damage isn't caused by a manufacturing fault or fair wear and tear though (ie, they're cack).
If examination of the ipod showed that there'd been damage consistent with it being dropped, and that had caused the problem with the battery, then they are totally reasonable saying that. (say it had damaged the connector or something and that was causing the fault).
Similar kind of thing with mobile phones (and I suspect ipods, laptops etc) and liquid ingress. A lot of them have a pad hidden inside the phone which turns (permanently) red when there's liquid ingress in the device. Then when they open it because, err, it won't power on under warranty, they see the pad and immediately know that there's been liquid ingress then they just look and find out if that has caused the fault - if it has, send it back with snotty letter!
Past experience tells me that people won't admit to trashing it when booking it for repair because it's not covered. Break one of the front USBs on your Emachines and you'll find if you bend the pins to touch the outside of the port it will short out the PC and it won't turn on. Not even the cheapest, crappiest USB ports will break under normal usage, normally if you have something plugged into it (and it's low down) and you tread on it... I've nearly done that a few times, don't really use my front USBs much now. But I have been using PCs since before USB ports, and have never broken one - and this is on PCs where there's been like 2, or 4 of them and you're forever hotswapping... Same thing with cracks on laptop LCD screens - normally if you shut the lid with something inside them. This doesn't happen normally. Likewise, keys dropping off laptop keyboards (again, have you ever seen this happen normally, unless people have been damaging the keyboard) and cracked casing on laptops... Normally the latter is when people drop them or something - and the manufacturers will not pay for these repairs. (Back to your Emachines - your warranty will though). I have seen some really funny accounts of damage to PC equipment in the past - it will surprise you.
Though all that said, the blue biro incident won't count against you seeing as it won't affect the use of the headphones (and come on, which kids don't have school blazers or whatever - trackies and hoodies with school logo round here [brap] - with pens in the pockets normally the same as the ipod) but if they can see the evidence of using the headphones to combat starvation then why should they? Then again, I suppose it would cost them less to just mail you a new pair, than to mail the old one back with a snotty letter saying that you shouldn't be eating them, and then have to deal with the snotty phone call from kid wanting new earphones and associated wrangling.
lol