terms and conditions

clearly, warranties are a joke. all these companies claim that if you have a problem with the product they sold you, they'll repair it if its within the time constraints. the thing is, they have all these fine print terms and conditions (exceptions to the warranty, in other words) that basically disqualify any problem you could come across under the sun. of course, there are some reasonable exceptions to the warranty cuz some people are just weird and do crazy things.

anyway, my reason for this rant is all because of my ipod. today my beautiful run was cut short when my ipod froze in the middle of my run. crappit. i kept trying to hit buttons and get it to restart, but no good. i was pretty fired up mad by the time i got to the dorm. called up my dad...who knows why because he wouldn't know anything about it, so then resorted to apple's tech support website. followed the instructions (held down the menu and play/pause buttons) for restarting a frozen ipod and it didn't work. tried again. and again. thinking i would have to send it into repair, i read over the "repair terms and conditions" and came accross something that made me chuckle...even though i was mad:

“Apple reserves the right to refuse repair service on products that have serial numbers altered, defaced or removed or that are damaged due to accident, abuse, neglect, misuse (including faulty installation, repair, or maintenance by anyone other than Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider), unauthorized modification, extreme environment (including extreme temperature or humidity), extreme physical or electrical stress or interference, fluctuation or surges of electrical power, lightning, static electricity, fire, acts of God or other external causes. In such event, Apple will return the product to you without repairing it, and may charge you the Diagnostic Fee, plus applicable sales tax.”

i especially like the “acts of God” part. can you think of anything that could be covered by the warranty? i especially think its kind of them to charge you for shipping, the diagnostic fee, and sales tax after not fixing anything. how nice. oh, and if you’re wondering, I ended up calling apple and they told me to hold down two different buttons to restart it…it worked. too bad they didn’t have it right on the website. grrr.