The following is the long, frustrating tale of the epic battle (see: painstaking ordeal) I recently had with AppleCare regarding my iPod nano. I wrote up this narrative — complete with angry interjections — so that a friend who works at Apple could forward it along to some higher-ups. Hopefully it’ll also serve as a warning about the general perils of Apple customer service… no matter who shiny and delicious their products are.

In mid-August of this year I turned on my iPod nano (purchased 6/08 and still under AppleCare) to discover a thin, black vertical line running through the screen. The next day I power cycled the iPod, hoping the line would go away. In its place were two such black lines. This was troubling, since the device was in good condition, well cared for, and hadn’t suffered any damage — never dropped, had anything spilled on it, etc.

When the lines had not gone away two weeks later, on September 1st, I called AppleCare and spoke with Dorian, who troubleshot with me, surmised that the problem was a hardware glitch, said he was putting a note in the system that the iPod should be replaced, and gave me the case ID number D25594610. I would have taken the device to the San Francisco Apple store to have it replaced in person, but my husband, who bought it for me as a birthday present, had had it engraved, and Dorian let me know that in order to replicate that engraving I’d have to send the current iPod into the AppleCare center, which would then issue a new iPod that would get sent to Asia to get engraved before coming back to me, and that the entire process should take about two weeks. I agreed this was the best option, and Dorian sent me a box to ship back my current iPod to the AppleCare center.

A few days later I received my pre-paid Fedex box, and a day or two after that my husband sent off my old iPod. By September 8th it had been received by the AppleCare center. At 9:37 am I received an email letting me know the device had arrived. By 12:37 pm I received a second email claiming that the device had been has been “inspected by Apple technicians, who have determined that it has been subjected to accidental damage or misuse, which is not covered by the warranty or an Apple service contract. Therefore your product is being returned to you unrepaired. You should expect to receive it within two business days along with a letter that gives details of this assessment.” Below this information was listed my correct San Francisco shipping address.

When I had not received my iPod by 9/20, twelve days later, I got worried. I called AppleCare that night, a Sunday, to figure out what had happened. I spoke to an operator who told me he couldn’t speak to the issue, that I had to call back and speak to someone Monday through Friday (information I found out the next day was incorrect) and that, according to the system, the device had never even left the AppleCare facility.

As per his instructions, I called back on Monday, 9/21 and spoke to Jennifer in Idaho, who gave me a very different story. She said that the device had indeed been shipped out and delivered back to me on 9/8, the very day it was supposed to have arrived and been assessed, at 8:41 am, i.e. before either 9/8 AppleCare email had even been sent to me. Upon expressing concern – I had, after all, definitely not received my returned iPod – Jennifer looked into the shipping address, which was in fact not my apartment in San Francisco, but an unknown location in Elk Grove, California, some hour or two outside of the city, which it had been signed for by a J Cornell. She provided me with a tracking number, 499 025805 554.

This was even more concerning. Who was J Cornell? Had the iPod been signed for by a stranger and stolen? If so, how had the return address been changed? Jennifer said she didn’t know, but that theft was a very real possibility, and that AppleCare wouldn’t take responsibility in that instance. Could J Cornell be someone in my apartment building’s leasing office, she wondered (possible, though it wouldn’t explain the address change)? Or perhaps something got mixed up in the AppleCare warehouse. Just in case, she gave me a new case number, 136759189, for a possible warehouse mix-up. Either way, she said, I would have to take up the issue with Fedex. She gave me their customer service number and wished me luck.

On 9/22, now convinced that my iPod was not only broken – that issue having taken a backseat to its disappearance – but also stolen, I called my leasing office. No, no one there had signed for it. I then called Fedex and spoke with Pat Long. When I explained the situation and gave her the tracking number Jennifer had provided me, she explained that this number was not for an item sent from AppleCare to me, but for the initial box I sent from my apartment to Apple. This made significantly more sense, given the dates. J Cornell, she explained, was an employee in the distribution department at the AppleCare facility in Elk Grove, California. She was even able to give me the specific drop-off point, 3011 Laguna St., Building A.

So AppleCare had mixed up the tracking numbers in their system, switching the incoming number for the outgoing number. That meant the iPod, if it had ever even been sent out, could still be anywhere. That same day I called AppleCare for a third time and spoke to Bill, a supervisor, the first such employee who was able to give me accurate information – at least, accurate to the best of his knowledge. After poking through the system, Bill was able to figure out that my old iPod had indeed been sent back to me via Fedex. Fedex had then made three attempts to deliver it to my apartment, one on 9/10, another on 9/11, and then again on 9/13. After three unsuccessful attempts they brought the device back to AppleCare.

Here is where yet another layer of unbelievably poor customer service enters the equation. Fedex, whom AppleCare chooses to rely on for their deliveries, left no notice on any of those three days that they had attempted to deliver a package. To make matters worse, I was home on all three of those days. No one rang the bell for my apartment, or left a slip, or even attempted to leave a package with the leasing office, which was open and visible from the front door. In short, no attempt whatsoever was made to “deliver” the iPod. I expressed my disbelief to Bill, who sighed and simply said, “It happens all the time. Fedex did it to me last week.”

While we were speaking, without me knowing it, Bill put a code into the system so that the distribution department would send the iPod back to me overnight (still leaving me with the problem of what to do when Fedex never bothered to deliver it). This caused a problem once we started talking about the issue I’d had with the device in the first place, those black lines. I explained to Bill that I was concerned that the product wasn’t being repaired, since Dorian had assured me it would be, and since no “accidental damage” had occurred. Bill looked again into the system. It had been sent back to me, he said, because the technicians had found that the moisture indicator, which lets them know if something has been spilled on the device, was fully red.

Except that nothing had spilled on it. Could moisture in the air set it off, I asked, exasperated? “No,” Bill laughed, “in that case mine would have gone off long ago.” Baffling. Then we hit another problem: Bill said that the technicians who assess such cases always take photos of the devices and put them into the computer system to document the decision. He could find no such photos of my iPod, i.e. no proof that it was actually my device that had been assessed or that the moisture indicator had actually been set off. With this in mind, and given the absurd process I had already gone through just to figure out where my broken iPod was, Bill said he would make sure it did indeed get replaced.

The next problem: he had already put in the code to have it overnighted to me. He said it couldn’t be called back once the order was in place. I’d just have to wait until it arrived – if it arrived – then get a new Fedex box, send it back to Apple, and start the entire process over again. Having already lost three weeks and countless hours to this absurdity, that was more than I could bear. Resigned to lose the sentimental engraving on the back of the iPod, I said instead that, once it was back in my hands, I would take it to the San Francisco Apple store. Bill said he was putting a code into the system that would override the initial decision not to replace it, which would let the Genius Bar technicians know no assessment was necessary. All they had to do was take my old iPod and hand me a new one.

Needless to say the original iPod did not arrive from Fedex as promised. The next morning, 9/23, I skipped class (I’m a graduate student at UC Berkeley as well as a technology journalist) to wait for the package, which never arrived. At Bill’s suggestion, I tracked down the number of my local Fedex facility and called to check on the status of the item, which had not yet reached their office despite being “overnighted,” but which, if they received it the next day, they said they would deliver before 2:00. The next day, Thursday, 9/24, I had many important things to do outside of the apartment, but literally could not leave in case I missed the package. I called Fedex again first thing in the morning to see when the delivery truck might come. They said they didn’t know but I should stay by the phone and they would call the driver who would call me back shortly with an estimate. No return call. I called again at noon and was told the same thing. Again, no return phone call. Finally, at 1:45, the doorbell rang.

24 days after calling with a simple hardware problem, numerous phone calls and moments of unnecessary stress later, I had my old iPod in-hand, exactly how I had sent it off, not repaired, not replaced. This had been literally a waste of hours and hours of life.

That Saturday, 9/26, I took it to the Apple store. At the Genius Bar I was seen by PJ, and given the reference number R26219782. I explained to PJ my long saga. Friendly and helpful, if baffled by the frantic state the entire process had worked me into, PJ told me that he could find no sign of the replacement code Bill had supposedly put into the system. What’s more, he had never heard or such a code before. At my wit’s end, I explained to him the initial problem, the black lines, the supposedly red moisture indicator. He said that the story I was told by AppleCare didn’t make sense, that iPods are hard to open up and technicians rarely if ever do so to take photos to put into the system. The moisture indicator, however, could be seen without opening the iPod case. PJ peered inside the jack.

The moisture indicator, which the technicians at AppleCare had marked in the system as being completely red, which had caused the iPod to be sent back to me in the first place, starting this entire saga – that moisture indicator, PJ said, had not been set off in the slightest. It was all a mistake. Perhaps they had been looking at the wrong iPod, he suggested.

Seeing my exasperated state and the myriad of notes in my file – made by one person after another with wrong information, a stunningly disheartening testament to the confusion and incompetence of AppleCare’s customer service representatives – PJ agreed to replace my iPod. He made notes in the system, gave me a printout confirmation, and told me to expect a phone call over the next few days letting me know the new device was available for pickup.

On Thursday, 10/1, a full month after beginning this process, I handed over my old iPod at the Genius Bar and received my new one – not engraved, certainly not easy to obtain, but working at least. When clearing my case through the system, the Genius Bar rep who made this last transaction spent a long time squinting at the screen, calling over supervisors, and trying to sort out whether or not to let me walk out of the store. When I’d finally been given the good-to-go nod I said, “This process has been endless and horrible. It’s not you guys here at the Geniur Bar, it’s AppleCare. I’d like to file an official complaint. How can I do that?”

The Genius Bar rep furrowed his brow, looked at my skeptically, and said “Um…” Then he tapped the rep to his right on the shoulder. “This woman would like to file an official complaint with AppleCare,” he said. Together they looked at me like I was annoying and crazy. The second rep laughed, then the first, a laugh that said, “It doesn’t work like that. They don’t care.” And that was all the info they would give me.

Needless to say, this drawn-out, hellish process has seriously tainted my view of AppleCare, if not Apple products. As someone working in the tech industry and a contributor to publications like Macworld, I’ve long had high esteem for Apple and the items they sell. At the height of this ordeal, I posted on Twitter the follow warning, which went out to hundreds of followers: “NEVER send your iPod to AppleCare for repair. It will disappear for three weeks, appear stolen, and reappear un-repaired.” How can I recommend an iPod or any other device to a friend or a reader when there’s even a chance that their customer service experience could mirror mine?