[yachtboy]

Last year, I bought the X20 on the first day it came out. It was my 3rd iRiver, after an old H20 and a T10. Now, about 11 months into a 12 month warranty, the player is inexplicably dying on me at seemingly random intervals.

No biggie, it's still under warranty, right? I called up the customer service number, waited patiently, and.....got treated like a piece of *!$# by iRiver "customer service" because I bought an X20. The dude on the other end of the phone with me was upset with ME for buying an X20 because it wasn't officially released in the US and I'd had the nerve to go online and find a retailer who would sell me one (at the time I bought it, I didn't even know that it was being shipped from another country). He accused me in so many words of costing the company money (???) and wouldn't offer me any resolution other than to sell it on eBay. He started yelling at me and eventually I got so heated I had to hang up.

This was my first time contacting iRiver customer support, and definitely my last. There are too many other good players out there for me to be treated like this. My days of proudly showing off my X20 to my friends and explaining why it's better than an iPod are over.
Seriously, this has got to be one of the more miserable customer service experiences of my life. I'd expect BS like this from Best Buy, but not from a small struggling vendor with a loyal fan base--small companies are supposed to value their customers, not crap on them.

Ciao, iRiver. It was nice while it lasted. I'm looking forward to a nice new 32 gb Creative Zen.