I payed $350 to lose my music library!

Question

im so happy i spent my money on a creative zen touch just to have it screw up 3 months after i baught it. somebody needs to fix this problem because "we arent sure why this occurs" isnt good enough. you shouldn't have to format the whole dri've just to get the player to work again. i mean come on people this isnt some small investment... people spend hours and hours looking for music, building their collection and all creative has to say is "unfortunately the only way to fix the problem is to delete everything" i cant believe i thought that if i baught a zen touch i would avoid all of the problems that ipod has. but now i wish i had gone for the ipod. also even though i can load music onto it again after formatting i still have a major problem. the earphone jack is all messed up because i decided to chuck the little crap earphones that came with it and baught some dope sony headphones. but hey what do you expect... just another scam from creative to get you to spend money after ur 3 month warrenty is up... cause they know once u see how many problems u have with the machine u wont buy anything from them again. their only way to get repeat customers is through repairs. anyways that my 2 cents on this joke of a company.Message Edited by hangia on 03-30-2005 0:2 AM

Answer 1

Hi hangia
You seem to have had a bad experience of Creative with your Zen Touch. Looking at a lot of the other posts on this forum there seem to be a lot of complaints about the Touch and the Zen Micro. Maybe Creative have become a victim of their own success - producing too many different products too quickly and without enough development before release.
I have definitely got the feeling that they have treated what should be a hi-fi consumer product as a computer peripheral (which is where their roots lie). Their "customers" are expected to put up with a product that doesn't work properly straight out of the box and needs to be upgraded with new firmware as fixes are developed. Just like their computer products.
I see the release of new firmwares as a bonus that you don't get with a lot of products. As a long-time PC user I have got used to this way of doing things but I could see how a normal consumer could become frustrated by the whole process.
Back to your problem. How come you have lost your music collection? Surely you had a copy of everything on your PC? Again this relates to where you came to this product from. If, like me, it's from the PC side of things, then we are constantly told "Back-up, Back-up, Back-up" so that we don't lose any important information. This has carried over into my music collection - I have my music on my PC, it's also on my JB 20GB and the music I have downloaded as opposed to ripping from my CDs is also copied to a spare hard dri've. Unless my whole house burns down I should always have a copy left somewhere. If the worst did happen I think I'd have a bit more to worry about than my music collection.
Again, if you have expected to treat your Zen as a consumer product that just works (as you are perfectly entitled to do) then backing up your music would not have been something you'd probably think of.
From my POV I think Creative have done a decent job so far - producing regular firmware updates to give fixes and new functionality, and creating these forums so we can express our opinions and seek help from others. I also have a Phillips Digital TV Recei'ver - I know that there is a later firmware with new funtionality because my Dad has it but will they release it so that earlier versions can be upgraded? Will they heck! Is there a forum where I can discuss this with others? Not set up by Phillips there isn't! Because it's a consumer product.
I think there needs to be some movement from both sides on this debate. Creative need to develop their products for longer before releasing them on the public (but then they'd lose out to their competitors), and we need to erase from our minds any thoughts we might have had of this being a consumer product. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I had a Zen Touch/Micro!
PB