The End of an Era

It is with much sadness that I report that all of the CompUSA stores are closing. Sadness you say? It’s not so much that I absolutely CompUSA love that store…because that’s not it. It isn’t even the fact that the store is close to home and they have some harder to find computer parts (as opposed to Best Buy or Circuit City). No, it is because I’m losing my iPod upgrade scheme.

Yes. The little insider information I received back in early 2004. Basically, you purchase an iPod with CompUSA’s 1 year warranty. Then, about 10-11 months later, bring in the iPod, claim a problem, and you get a newer model. There’s a little more to it than that, but that’s the high level view.

Here’s a time line of my success story:

For my birthday back in 2004, I threw down some cash for a 3rd generation iPod with 15 GB of space and a 1yr warranty. It was music monochrome glory. After that beauty broke in March of 2005, I upgraded to a 4th generation iPod Photo with 30 GB of space (with another warranty). You know…I never did put any photos on it. Then in February of 2006, I started to experience some legitimate issues with the iPod Photo…so I took it back to CompUSA. I ended up with a 5th generation iPod with 60 GB and the ability to play videos (side note: I watched a ton of Lost and Battlestar Galactica on the iPod during this trip). This time I started to feel slightly guilty coming in year after year with “broken” iPods. As a result I got the 2 year warranty. I figured 60 GB would last me a long time and it seemed like a really solid iPod.

Which brings me to this week. If you were keeping track of the years and warranties, the 5th gen warranty was set to expire in March of 2008. However, with CompUSA’s announcement, I didn’t expect our store to remain open too far past Christmas…if for that long. So CompUSA was forcing my hand. I should also mention that when I got the 5th gen iPod, they actually had a tech examine the iPod Photo to determine the validity of my claim. In other words, this was not going to be easy since I needed to “find” an issue with current iPod and hope they were still going to honor the warranty.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story tomorrow.

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