Fortunate Mistakes with Tech-Toys

My iPod battery was always dying on me when I wanted to use it.  Barb decided to get me a new one.  She investigated the sales on ebay.  She found a good deal on a 16G 4^th generation.  The seller said that his company bought it for him but he never used it.  So he gave it to his wife but she didn’t use it either.  So he was selling it and it was just like new.  So Barb bought it.

It came in the mail in a few days.  I excitedly initialized it.  I set up my email and my apps.  However, the new iPod battery was even worse than the old iPod at holding a charge.

So I did some investigation on the internet.  I found some information about iPod batteries going into “deep discharge state” if they are stored for a few weeks with no charge.

Barb emailed the seller.  She complained that the battery on the iPod was not good. She mentioned the “deep discharge state” information.  Barb thought that because the iPod was never used it was probably stored without a charge and the battery went into a deep discharge state.  She said she wanted her money back.

The seller wrote back saying the battery was fine.  It sounded like he wasn’t going to give us our money back.  So Barb started a complaint on ebay about the problem.  Ebay said we should try to work it out with the seller and if we couldn’t work it out in couple of weeks to our satisfaction, they would take action.

I prepared the iPod to return to the seller.  I initialized it back to factory settings.  Then we waited a few days.

After a while, I noticed the battery lasted a lot longer now that it was reset.  So I did some more research.  I found out that the apps that I had installed were draining my battery.  So the new iPod battery was fine and my old iPod battery worked fine too once I removed the apps.

Barb wrote to the seller.  She said we had found the problem and everything was okay now.  He said he was happy that everything worked out.  Barb was embarrassed about sending him the earlier email.  She cancelled the ebay complaint she had started.

Now I had two iPods. 

The funny thing was that Barb’s iPod that she uses even more often than I do started giving her trouble.  One day the on/off switch wouldn’t work.  She panicked because she had all of her contact phone numbers stored on her iPod and didn’t have a paper copy.

Fortunately, we were able to finally get it to turn on.  I backed it up on my computer.  Then I restored the files from the backup on my new iPod and gave it to her.  Barb was very happy to have a working iPod again.  So we really did need a new iPod.  Everything worked out fine for both of us in the long run.