I’ve been detailing my experiences with the red-headed stepchild of portable MP3 players, the Microsoft Zune, for a little while now. While my time with the device itself has largely been positive in terms of functionality, sound quality and ease of use, a couple of incidents that occurred over the course of this summer leave me unable to say the same thing about the Zune’s warranty support.
Around June, the dust under the screen of my Zune reached the level where it seriously impeded my ability to view video except in low-light conditions. I called up Microsoft Zune support and after haggling with more than one representative (largely my fault, as I was unaware that dust under the screen was a valid warranty replacement claim), I was told that they would be sending me a box and a shipping label so that I could return my Zune to be serviced. They also explained that it would most likely be replaced with a refurbished unit instead of actually being disassembled, cleaned and returned to me.
So I waited approximately 5 days, received my box, and then sent the Zune away to wherever Zunes go just before they end up in the big landfill in the sky. This reset my waiting clock, and it was another 15 days before a shiny, new-to-me Zune was delivered back to my home. Grumbling a bit, but feeling largely powerless I opened up the box and set about restoring both my music and my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes to the unit.
Upon connecting it to the software on my PC, I discovered that the Zune that had been sent back to me was not exactly…fresh. Browsing through it I discovered that there were a number of video files already sitting there on its hard drive. Thinking that they were perhaps promotional vids from Microsoft, I simply deleted them and didn’t think too much about it until a few weeks later when I was listening to my music on random. Suddenly, I was hit with a song that I hadn’t loaded onto the player, by a band I in fact despised. Surprised, it took me a few seconds to realize that there must have been a number of music tracks also pre-installed on my supposedly refurbished Zune that I just hadn’t noticed when I first booted it up.
Later that day, I connected the device back to the software interface in order to delete the offending track. Unfortunately, according to my PC, the song did not exist on my Zune hardware. No matter how I searched for it, it just didn’t turn up. A sinking feeling began to form in the pit of my stomach as it dawned on me that somehow, the OS on the Zune had become corrupted to the point where someone’s old music was now sharing the space with my own – old music that was completely impossible to remove.
How many more tracks were out there, sneakily hiding amongst the ones and zeros, tracks that had been once loved by my Zune’s previous owner but which were now my sworn enemies? The answer turned out to be quite a few, as I would discover over the next few weeks of frustrating playlist interruptions. I also began to have problems with the Zune not being able to play songs that were legitimately mine, either giving me a “not found” or “rights expired” error when attempting to load them. Eventually this snowballed until approximately one out of every four or five tracks was completely unplayable.
It was at this point that I completely outsmarted myself and caused myself a great deal of misery for no defensible reason. I was planning a rather long road trip the week of my compounding Zune errors, and the night before I figured I would just format the Zune in order to erase all of the content and reload my tracks once more. Unfortunately, there is no actual “format” command in the Zune software, merely the option to remove all files. I did this, naively thinking that perhaps it would wipe clean the phantom tracks that had plagued me for over a month now. To my horror, even though the PC interface software showed no files listed on my device at all, once I had unplugged it from its cradle there were close to one hundred unwelcome, undeleted songs still displayed in its song list.
I searched online vainly trying to find an answer to my problem. The general consensus amongst what few Zune gurus there are out there was that I needed to do a “hard reset” on the device, which would put it into a safe mode and actually delete the firmware and everything on the hard drive. I did this twice, each time downloading and re-installing the up-to-date Zune firmware and each time finding myself still unable to remove the songs in question. What’s worse is that each time I performed the hard reset, the amount of free hard drive space on my Zune incrementally shrank at a rapidly increasing rate. Suddenly 85 percent of my Zune was occupied by “reserved space” – even though the unit was completely devoid of any actual files that I had loaded on it.
The third time I tried my reset – I know, I know, ever the optimist – the device wouldn’t load anything on the screen other than a message telling me to “Contact Support.” It wouldn’t even recognize that it was attached to my PC cradle. I broke down and dutifully dialed the tech support division as I had been commanded, where it was determined that the device would have to be sent back once more – mere weeks after my previous service call – and replaced.
Here is where my real beef starts. For one, I was told that there was no way for them to send me a refurbished device before they had received mine back. To me, this is upsetting and not in line with many other companies I deal with in terms of parts or product replacements. Keeping in mind how long the previous replacement cycle had taken, I opted this time to print out the return label online and send it back in my own box. I deposited my package at the UPS store that very day.
9 days later it was marked as received through Microsoft’s online support tracker. 9 days! I have no idea how it takes UPS longer to send a package across a few states than standard first class USPS takes to cross the country, but such was the priority Microsoft had placed on appeasing their customers. The very next day, my request was marked as completed and shipped, which gave me hope that soon I would be reunited with the tiny device that kept my car rides and gym workouts bearable. But no – it would be another full 11 days before whatever square-wheeled UPS implement that was being used to transport my package pulled up in front of my home and dropped another Zune on my porch. That made 20 days of total transit time, an incredibly ridiculous period to keep a customer waiting and one which could have been completely avoided by sending me a fresh Zune along with a return box.
It was with some trepidation that I opened up my previous new Zune box and hit the power switch. Nervously, I scanned for the presence of foreign data in the form of songs, videos and pictures and….found all three. Unbelievably, Microsoft had sent me yet another device that had not been properly cleared of the previous owner’s information. Immediately, before even connecting to my computer I did 2 hard resets, successfully (this time) deleting the unwelcome bits and pieces of a stranger’s life that had polluted my Zune.
The real heartbreaker in this situation is the fact that I now live under the pendulum of not knowing whether I will once again, in a short period of time, begin to suffer from the same problems that my previous Zune with its similar phantom data had displayed. Given that my warranty runs out in November, I find myself at a crossroads. Microsoft will let me extend it for $50.00 – 25% of the purchase price – but I am uncertain as to whether I want to get back on their tech support roller coaster.
My one piece of advice to anyone buying a Zune is to purchase it at a big box retailer, like I did, but when they offer you the extended, no questions asked replacement warranty, don’t be like me and turn up your nose in refusal. Take it – I sincerely regret not having the ability to walk into Best Buy, dump the Zune on the counter and say “you deal with it” as I walk out the door with a brand new – not refurbished – replacement Zune.
