Any experience with Best Buy's ADH warranty?

[torinsmom]

I bought my son an Ipod Touch at Best Buy in August and he really loves it. I bought the extended warranty, which includes the accidental damage warranty. Yesterday, my DS dropped the IT and it fell into the wet grass. He picked it up immediately, but it is DEAD. We even put it in a baggy of dry rice all night.

The ADH is supposed to cover "drops and spills", but not negligent use or immersion in liquid. I am wondering if dropping the thing in the wet grass qualifies? ANyone had any experience with BB on this kind of thing?

Marsha

[~disneydiva~]

I can ask my DH. He works at Best Buy.

[Tuffcookie]

OP, What a coincidence. I just bought a Zune yesterday for my youngest DS's birthday (Dec 2) and I also bought the extended warranty. I thought it covered everything except loss so I'm interested in finding this out too!

TC

[barkley]

i'm willing to bet it was the drop vs. what was likely a quick exposure to the wet grass that killed the ipod. dd dropped her ipod from only a few feet onto a carpet over cement floor (library) and it trashed hers-best buy replaced it.

it seems like unless it's a 'quick fix' they just replace the unit.

[Blue.Fairy2]

I am interested in this also, I thought I read on the Budget board that water damage was covered, so it is not?

[acmeyer]

Unless he left it over night in the grass or in the grass had large puddle in it, it wasn't the wet that did it in. It was the drop. I know that people say never to buy xtended warranty's but i always do with my kids ipods, xbox's, wii's, playstations, and things of that nature. I just took my ds's ipod back to best buy last weekend as the headphone jack would no longer work. They no longer carried the model he had so he upgraded (for and additional $70 that he paid) to an ipod touch. We have replace 3 xboxes that way. I would just take it back and tell them it was dropped. If you had dropped it in the toliet - then i would say the damage would be from the water but not the grass.

[torinsmom]

I don't know.....it was pretty wet. We had a very rainy day here yesterday and the ground was still wet from Sunday as well. It was not a very long fall. He had it in his jacket pocket and was holding his jacket over his arm, so it fell maybe 2 feet at most to the soft grass. The end that has the plug for the USB cord and the headphone was all the way into the grass and was really wet when he grabbed it up. We dried it up real well and then put it in the rice to see if that would help.

Is there a way for them to tell if it is water damage vs. the drop that messed it up?

MArsha

[pixiewings71]

Sometimes electronics have spots in the battery compartment that change color when they get wet. My DD21 had a phone that she swears she did not get wet, it stopped working and when she tried to use her warranty to get it replaced they refused because it was water damaged. I ended up giving her my old phone to activate. I would suggest looking in the battery compartment, her spot turned pink when wet.

[OK!]

AFAIK it's the same with iPod Touches as it is for iPhones, which is to say there are 3 wetness sensors on the unit. All turn pink when exposed to liquid. One is in the docking area, one is down in the bottom of the headphone jack, and one is actually inside the device and can't be accessed or seen without cracking the device open. I don't know if Best Buy covers liquid damage or not. Most places won't (AppleCare won't, for sure....as soon as they see that one of the liquid sensors has been tripped, they quit analyzing the problem, diagnose it as "water damage," and that's all she wrote. I hope BB is different!)

[Phil'sFrontier]

Check your credit card(assuming you paid with a credit card) often they have extended warranty protection and sometimes a replacement clause built right in.

[glitterkittyy]

If Best Buy doesn't cover it, check with Apple directly. They have stood behind everything I have ever bought from them.

[OK!]

Originally Posted by Phil'sFrontier

Check your credit card(assuming you paid with a credit card) often they have extended warranty protection and sometimes a replacement clause built right in.

Yep. I know American Express does this. I've read stories from dozens of people on the iPhone-related forums I'm on who've benefited from this.

[torinsmom]

OP here with an update......

I took the Ipod Touch to Best Buy this afternoon and went through the expected drama. BB does cover water damage, not immersion, but things like spilling water on it or rain damage is covered. They couldn't decide if it was the water or the drop, there was evidence of both, but the sensors were not red(the ones they could see). They agreed it was covered under the accidental coverage included in the warranty I purchased.

The drama started because since I bought the IT in August, a new generation came out. The GeekSquad guy was saying it had to be replaced by the same exact IT. In order to do that, they had to do something called an "advance replacement", or at least I think that's what it was called. Basically, a new device is sent out from the warehouse. Well, the guy said they were backordered(no duh, they are the old generation now) and it could be weeks to months before we got the new one.

So...I told him that wouldn't work. I was told when I bought the warranty that if something happened to the IT, we could come in and get a new one on the spot. I asked him why we couldn't just get the new generation, and he said they couldn't do that because it was more money. So, I offered to pay the difference, since DS would love the new features. That was not an option either. They finally gave it to a manager, who said the same thing. Then he went on the computer to see if he could figure out how long the backorder would take. Well, lo and behold, he said the screen said there was an option of a substitute. He went and got a new generation IT and told the customer service person to do an exchange. The guy rang it up and the new one is actually $30 cheaper than the old one. This also made the warranty price go down(warranty is now updated to end in 11/2011) and I got a gift card for $41 on top of the new Ipod.

Moral of the story is stand your ground and they will honor the warranty.

Marsha

[Micca]

Good for you Torinsmom! Sorry you had to go through all of that (you shouldn't have to) but glad the outcome was to your satisfaction.

[Blue.Fairy2]

Originally Posted by glitterkittyy

If Best Buy doesn't cover it, check with Apple directly. They have stood behind everything I have ever bought from them.

applecare does not cover water damage.

Thank you for the report, we will be buying our DS his touch at BB with the EW.