At the beginning of June I dropped my Creative Zen Vision:M MP3 player about six inches onto a carpeted floor and killed it. There wasn't a mark on it, but it was not responding to anything I tried. I’m still amazed at how easy it was to destroy and it makes me wonder about its long term robustness. After visiting the Creative website, I made a warranty claim, not mentioning that I dropped it. About 24 hours later I received an E-mail with instructions to send it by insured post to their service centre in Dublin, Ireland. I therefore packaged it up safely and sent it off.
The e-mail pointed me to their website where I could follow its progress. This I check daily, but for the first week it didn’t understand the reference code I’d been given. After this I was informed that it had been received on 01/01/1900, which was roughly 107 years before it had been posted. I know that Ireland has a slower pace of life than England, but I wouldn’t have thought that it was quite that slow!
After a week of daily checking the website, nothing had changed and I received another e-mail asking me to send my MP3 player to a service centre in Poland. I replied explaining why this was possible and immediately had a reply telling me to send it in Ireland once more. By now I was a little concerned that they didn’t really know what was going on, I certainly didn’t. Despite my best efforts at interrogating their website, I was unable to find a telephone number to call them on, so I just watched the Website in the hope that ‘”Repair Pending” would change to “Returning to Owner”.
Another week passed and another e-mail arrived. This one stated that they had not yet received it and if it didn’t turn up within 30 day, they would cancel the repair number. Now I was really worried that it was sitting forgotten about on a shelf in some workshop gathering dust. Never to be seen again. Having checked with the Royal Mail that it had been delivered, I once again sought out a telephone number. This time however, I found it on a scrap of paper in the original box. The chap on the other end of the line was very helpful and explained that they had changed over to a new system right in the middle of repair and I had fallen down a crack.
On Friday a new replacement arrived from Germany. It works perfectly and I’m once again able to enjoy mobile music.
Post Script
While I was busy restoring my music files onto my
replacement Creative Zen Vision:M, I thought I’d have a quick game on my Xbox360. I switched it on and was greeted with the now infamous “Ring of Death”!
AAARRRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!!!
I do like those Creatives. If my 20Gb iRiver ever died I would go for a 30Gb or 60Gb Creative. The warranty claim sounds like a nightmare but I'm sure every company has its quirks with customer ervice.
ReplyDeleteAlthough after 3 years of frequent use including a bit of droppage along the way I am beginning to think the iRiver is indestructible.
i like this type of gadgets very much.. enjoy it.
ReplyDelete