UPS dutifully delivered my second refurbished iPod this afternoon. The battery was pretty well dead, so I hooked it up to the wall charger for a few hours until it said it was all charged up. Then I hooked it up to the laptop, setup iTunes to sync 18 GB of music, and crossed my fingers. Would this one work?

No. iTunes claims that it’s synced about 350 songs, and then it gives a file write error and dies. I tried removing the song that it died on from the sync list and syncing again, still no joy. The iPod totally locks up, has to be reset, and doesn’t end up with more than the first 11 tracks of the first album on it. Now, I like Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, but I’m gonna need the iPod to hold more than that.

So I guess it’s back to Best Buy tomorrow for yet another return. I’m not good at being confrontational in the store - usually I figure that the person behind the counter doesn’t have much control over it, so why be hard on them? But this time I won’t wait long before asking to see a manager. I waited two weeks for this second refurb, and it turned out to be trash, too. I want a gift card. I know their policy says I need to get another lemon before I get a gift card, but I really don’t want to have to wait another two weeks just to find out whether the next one is any good.

Grrrrrrr.