My day to day activities is to handle returns for an online MP3 Players shop. With the nature of electronics, they are not fail proof, there are always the odd few that come back with manufacturer faults which is not a problem as we just change over the goods and never hear back from the customer, our company is quite generous with their returns, at times they will agree to a return and replacement of equipment that was caused by the customer, stuff like uploading wrong firmware updates etc.

I have one pet hate with some of the products that come back and I’m thankful that management see’s eye to eye with me; that is cracked screens. Well I don’t have issues with the screens themselves, it’s more of how they get cracked and the lack of ownership of the customer cracking it

Just the other week I received a phone call from a customer who claimed that her son’s MP3 Player screen cracked itself. He claimed he was using it one day and he took out of his pocket and the screen just cracked itself. The mother claimed that the MP3 Player was in great condition and her son took care of it well.

We agreed to take a look at it even though we had our suspicions, but we gave her the benefit of the doubt and got it back.
A few days later I received the MP3 Player and inspected it for the self cracking screen.
I didn’t expect the MP3 Player to be in brand new condition as they did buy it 4 or 5 months ago, but as well as the screen being cracked the USB port was damaged to a point where I couldn’t plug in a USB lead and even worst the player’s screen was lifted from the base of the player which could have been caused by a fall or they attempted to fix the screen themselves (big no no as it voids warranty).

This frustrated me, how could the customer claim the player was in good condition let alone the screen cracked itself from the condition it was in.
Screens don’t crack themselves; use some common sense and look after your gear and it will last you a good amount of time or even invest in a skin or case if you think you’re a bit clumsy. The trend is continuing for larger screens with more and more MP3 Players are coming out with touch screens, if you break it you may see a hefty bill for the replacement of the screen. I’ve tried on many occasions to return players back under warranty without any success.

We deal with Headphones and MP3 Players from brands like Creative Zen if you want to check out the store.
Good luck people.