Well if I’m gonna gripe when I think things have gone wrongly, it is only right that I applaud when I feel that justice has been done.  :-)

I made my trip to Best Buy this afternoon with my second defective refurbished iPod.  I had been steeling myself for this visit, preparing to ask to speak to a manager if necessary.  (I’m really bad at confrontation, but this has been getting ridiculous.)  I went back to the Geek Squad counter and talked to one of their employees (one I hadn’t spoken to before).

I didn’t say much at all: “long story.  This is the second refurb I’ve gotten, and it doesn’t work, either.”  I explained the issue - the thing wouldn’t sync with the PC - it locked up after only 1 GB of transfer.  He said “let me check something real quick…” and headed off to a computer backstage.  He came back a couple of minutes later with some good news.  “Let’s just get  you a new iPod.  That should make sure it doesn’t happen again.”  FINALLY!  So I went off to the iPod counter, requested a 30 GB black iPod, and headed over to Customer Service for the cashier to ring up the transaction.

Here’s where it gets better.  They weren’t just gonna give me a straight exchange for a new 30 GB iPod (which in itself would’ve been an upgrade from the 20 GB iPod that I took in originally) - they were essentially just gonna refund back the $299 I paid for that old iPod and then credit it to me.  When I realized that was the case, I suggested that I would instead like to take that $299 credit and apply it to a $349 80 GB iPod.  The cashier was amenable to the idea, so I headed back to the iPod counter, got the 80 GB unit, and paid $50 from my pocket to get the new iPod.  As a little bonus, Best Buy’s promotion this week gives you a $30 Best Buy gift card with the purchase of said iPod, so I got that as well.

As I sit here tonight typing this up, iTunes has copied over 622 of 5773 songs onto the new iPod. I don’t think I’ll sit up to wait for the sync to complete…  but I will sure enjoy having an iPod back.  Thank you, Best Buy, for finally getting this right.