Nitrus - Click of death...

...is this the end.

Well the Nitrus I bought from my wife back in early September is now giving a click from the hard drive is this the end of it?
RMM is un-able to cuerrently connect to it - though it did this morning, the attempt to retrive the database results in an opperiation time out.
When booted up normally it takes a long period of time, and then eventually says its got no tracks on it - it does.

Is this the end?

Any one have any advise or experience dealing with Rio Customer Care?

Yea.. dont bother emailing and call often.

Well after spend about 90 minutes on to Customer Care and working up through Rebecca, Marsha, been transfered to Sandy at Corprate (had to get called back due to the bad conferance line) and then been transfered to Hilda. And now have an incident open with Corprate Engineering.

So far I've learned:
The Nirtus is un-suitable for jogging - get something from the Stree range for that - their words.
That there is not a known issue with the hard drive in the Nitrus.
They have offered todo an out of warranty repair to it, for $125, which would bring my over all cost for the Nitrus to $425.

A few things are bothering me, so I'm just going to vent:
One; I should have gotten the Best Buy service plan, then this would be their actuarists problem.
Two; I'm way to honest for my own good, I should never have mentioned to any of the Customer Care reps that my wife jogs with it - they seem to have bitten on to this.
Three; there was something else, but I've cleared my chest.

In case who has access wants to read up, the incident # is 644259.

edit:
If anyone has an educated guess or opinion on this I'd appricate it, thanks.

Gotta say Rio are punctual, when they say 48 hours they mean 48 hours.
Thanks for reading my rants over the past week.

[RANT]
And it continues...
After 10 weeks of waiting I called to check on RMA# 21459...after getting dropped by the phone system twice I got transfer to JR (who work for Replay) who was able to access the database, and who was able to tell me that they have no record of receiving it...I've no idea how I mailed it to them...whether it was regular USPS, tracked or FedEx...so JR open incident # 695356 and transferred me to a manager called Chery who must exist at ext. null...dumped by the phone system again.
AGH!

Called back, CS in India(?) couldn't connect with me with Chery as she was busy, but could connect me with Misty White on a party line...bad party line so Misty said she'd ring me back...24+ hours and no call back.

Again called CS, I'm sorry to whom ever it was who picked up my call but I reamed him real bad, I'm just getting so pissed with hearing that the servers are down, that we'll transfer your call, that they'll call you back. Again I was told someone would call me back...I waited 30 minutes or so.

I gave up on CS and called Corporate at 408-565-7000, I asked to be transferred to Misty White who worked in CS, she said she couldn't transfer me directly to her but she could transfer me to CS....NOOOooooooooooo!!!!. So I explain my story to her, give her the numbers, the dates and so on.
So she transferred me to a director called Lindon @ 541 905 18** (don't see then need to give out his number), who takes my numbers and starts tapping away at his keyboard (strangle enough I'm tapping away at mine IM'ing a friend in .ie about MP3 players and recommending to him the Karma, but to get the extra cheese from Best Buy, am I a fool?), and not finding any record of it showing up in the system, my RMA exists but they never received the unit...same thing JR told me...he keeps tapping away at his keyboard, find an RMA from Milton MA (Hi Milton!) but nothing that matches mine, and nothing in the slush pile (uh, where did this one come from Billy?)...says he is going to ring Texas - but think they might be gone home for the day...asks for my numbers, I give him my desk number at work, and my admin's in case I’m else where. He gives me his, I like this, it makes me think that he will call back.
[/RANT]

Rio has great engineers and great products, but their marketing department and CS department need some work.

At this stage I just need closure, I need to be told that I'm SOL as the unit was lost in the mail, sorry.
At least then I can go buy another one or maybe the same thing from some other maker...who else makes something similar apart from Apple?

Thanks again for letting me rant guys.

PS: I didn't post in the "My empeg is working perfect" (or what ever the title was) thread, but just so every one knows it is. It is working great and keeps me sane as I commute up and down i495 in MA in my VW Golf TDI.

LINK

Last post.
Replacement Nitrus was on the doorstep Wednesday.
Rio realy steped up to the plate on this one as the one I had sent to them seems to have disappeared somewhere between MA & TX. At no point did they ask me if I hadn't mailed it.

So happy wife makes for a happy husband

The moral I'm picking up from this story is still this: Don't buy your girlfriend a hard-drive based portable MP3 player...

Someone stole my GF's CD player from her gym bag last week. Now she's asking me to get her a portable MP3 player that's suitable for the gym and jogging. Everything I read says to stay far far away from the Karma (I don't think she needs 20GB anyway) and I'm seeing much of the same about the 1.5GB Nitrus.

I'm tempted to get her an iPod, but I think they're overpriced - and their warranty isn't that hot either. 4GB would be a good size for her, but nothing of that size is available from Rio. I also can't bring myself to pay $150 for a 256MB Cali. Maybe if it were $75. Even then it would be a hard sell - with 256MB I'd have to re-encode some of my music at abysmal rates to get any decent amount of tracks on there.

So I'm stuck. Something that uses a standard 2.5" HD is far more bulletproof and easier to repair or replace a drive. But too bulky to use for jogging, especially strapped to an arm. Might be acceptable in a tight waist pack for some general workouts, but probably wouldn't hold up too well to bouncing around either.

Damn, I'm glad I do the majority of my own music listening in the car - now I just have to find time to install the empeg into this new ride.

Bruno

Get her an S series. They're cheap, and the size doesn't really matter: they hold enough for an average gym session. The sync features in Music Manager make it insanely easy to freshen up the music on your player after each gym session.

Bruno, if I was buring again I'd still be strongly considering the Nitrus - but this time I'd spend the extra $40 for the cheese.
Having said that it along with all HDD base players are not designed with anything more the walking in mind it seems.