After four months of wedded bliss, my Windows XP PC decided this weekend it no longer recognized my iPod’s existence. In other words, I plug in the Shuffle, it charges, but iTunes keeps waiting for me to plug in an iPod, and I don’t see it as a removable disk in Explorer.

Shite. And I happen to have only 10 songs on it right now. I need that iPod to walk to work and back, to work out.

Go to Apple’s support web site, try everything there. No dice.

Call Apple service, and with them I try everything on the support site. No dice. The girl on the other end has a worryingly stumped tone to her voice. She says she’ll send me a procedure via e-mail, I should try it and get back to them if it doesn’t work.

I try it. It doesn’t work. I get back to them.

Of course I get a new representative, who tells me I’m not entitled to phone support, because I’ve had the iPod more than 90 days. I should go to their web site for support.

But I got service an hour ago! I say. “Well I do apologize for that, but” blah blah blah go to the web site.

I say I’ve been there, and the answers there don’t work. So what do I do for service now?

Buy the extended service coverage. How much? 59$ US. A new iPod Shuffle now costs 69$ US. F***ckers!

I decide to try to troubleshoot the issue myself. I find in online forums that a LOT of people have this issue, and try everything that is advised. Including restoring my computer to an earlier image and installing a brand new USB 2.0 card (80$ CAD). No joy.

Finally, I try the iPod on two other computers and get the same issue, so it’s the iPod. How can I possibly not get service for a defective unit when I’ve had it less than a year? Than six months, even?

I call Apple service again and simply say my iPod isn’t recognized by my computer any longer. To my surprise, the rep says they’ll send me a new one within two days. And this was only proposed to me on the third call, after (no exaggeration) about 7 hours of messing about, and 80$ for a USB card? This new one better work.