The MD stands for MELT DOWN

A couple weeks ago, my Sony MiniDisc player stopped recording. And playing. And being of use. I still love the format, as I like making discs & switching them out without having to find one certain song out of more than 2 albums worth of music at a time. I also used it a lot for recording vocals (yup, that ams me in that there audio clip,) but it's mainly so I can have music I like playing as I dart through traffic all day long & do my best not to plow through the small cars. It's not all that easy, soooooo many of them just scream CRUSH ME! Volvos mostly. Those things'll suck the brain right outta you, via your ASS.

When the MD player died, I looked up my service options on Sony's site. Since I've had it 3 & 1/2 years, the warranty's long past expired, so the option given was to send it in with $140 for a replacement unit. A REFURBISHED unit, mind you. Which means I'd be giving them the player I paid $179 for, along with an additional $140, for a USED one. A used player that has no real guarantee of not going out like mine and now has a net cost of $319. Awesome.

Of course, this HAS to be a case where the site info hasn't been updated, right? No one in their right mind would ever pay that, and no one in their right mind would ever expect someone to pay that! Of course not, only government officials spend that carelessly! So today I called Sony's service line to get the REAL info from a human.

Of course, being Sony, they have to showcase their innovations. Their most dubious one is their automated service representative. A virtual tech whose name eludes me, so I will call him GAMBLOR. Gamblor asks you to respond to his questions with a yes or no, occasionally asking for a set of numbers. This is so you don't have to press the buttons like most auto menus, and risk running people down while you're driving, cos nobody calls from home anymore. Good thing too, since I was driving in heavy traffic when I made this call, and I secretly cursed Gamblor's efficiency which was preventing me from running people down. \:D/

After several yesses and nos, I get a human operator who I simply can't understand. He speaks like Christopher Reeve walks. Today. Since this is my 1st call to them, he needs to make a "Service Profile" which means he needs pretty much all my personal info, except blood type. This is fortunate, since I haven't received the results yet from Saturday's fiasco. Finally he asks what my problem is and I tell him that he creeps the holy living shit outta me and that he has no business interacting with people on any level and that I hope he's fired as soon as he helps me fix my MD player. I'm sure he's waiting outside my house now in the bushes, DON'T MAKE A SOUND. Authorities have been alerted, shh shhhhhhh!

After searching for repair info, he gives me a service number to give to the "Next Level of Service" operator he's about to connect me to. I can't help but laugh to see that Sony hasn't seemed to figure out how to simply send that number from one operator to another, go technonolgy! Thankfully, the Next Level Guy possesses Next Level pronounciation, but I have to give him my info again, whee! After checking to see if there's any kind of fix I could do myself, he tells me that it can't be repaired since it'd outweigh the cost of the unit. Heheh, UNIT.

Since it can't be repaired due to cost consideration, the only option left is the swapout for a refurbished one... for $156! So the site's info WAS out of date, prices went up! And since the new Hi-MD models start there, I guess my pretty blue MZ-N707 will continue to stand watch on top of the bills on my desk which prevent me from buying a Hi-MD for now. /D:\

Lesson: Portable audio costs too fucking much. STEAL what you can.