My Zen works great… well, it was working great for the past six months ’til today where it just decided to make a bitch fit and started acting up on me. Now it’s so b0rked, it won’t even turn on. Its general functionality has ceased, and now I’m going to attempt to get it fixed.

It all started when it froze at the “creative” splash screen as I turned it on. I did a restart, hoping it would be fixed, and the same happened. So I did a restart to the recovery menu and performed a disk cleanup — this was a fatal mistake. The blasted utility somehow, someway got stuck in an infinite loop and never completed. It froze the recovery menu and drained whatever was left of the battery.

So I tried connecting it to the PC to recharge via USB, it wouldn’t even recharge. That’s right, it won’t recharge. I’m crapped out of luck in terms of battery.

Can you see where I’m going with this? Yes, it sounds like my mp3 player is fubarred.

Then I moved on to download the latest firmware update (1.62), but the stupid update utility says “your player is not connected, please connect it” upon using it, even though it’s pretty damn obvious that there is a white cord connecting an mp3 player to a PC port. So yeah, I can’t even update firmware (which solves most acting-up problems on Zens). In fact, since I can’t access recovery menu anymore because the shit’s out of battery and won’t charge, I can’t do a reformat, which is basically the be-all end-all solution.

That’s right, I’m screwed, so I ended up resorting to the last resort: contacting customer support for warranty service, I still got a good 6 months left on manufacturer’s warranty.

… and if Creative refuses to service my mp3 player which costed me an arm and a leg, I’m never buying from them again.

EDIT: Creative support replied back and suggested an RMA (knew it was coming). However, they want a $25 fee because I’m outside the labor warranty still within the hardware warranty, and that’s not even factoring in the possible case of a repair/replacement cost.

For now I’m going to go with it and send it to them, but if they want more money, then… well, they can stick it up their own asses.