Dead iPod.

[mtlmouth]

My iPod is not much more than a paperweight right now. When I turned it on this morning, it froze; I reset it, it gave me the "sad iPod" logo and told me to visit www.apple.com/support/ipod. Neither computer I have hooked it up to has been able to recognize the iPod (and the iPod is completely unresponsive), so I have to take it to an Apple store or mail it in for service.
The nearest Apple store is over three hours away, so that's not an option, and sending it in for repair can cost up to $100. The iPod (4gb iPod mini) is a year and a half old, and the battery doesn't hold as much charge as it should anyway, so I don't know if it'd be worth the investment.
My dad found www.ipodmechanic.com. I can send it in to them for free and they'll diagnose the problem. Either they will fix it and send it back to me, or they'll buy it from me as a broken iPod.
I've decided that if the repairs will cost more than $50, I'm just going to replace it, since a brand new iPod nano costs only $150. So, I guess my question is, does iPodmechanic look legit? Are there other options I'm not thinking of?

[PontiusPirate]

We have a new nano, and it apparantly has freezing problems (according to the guy at bestbuy), but they don't seem to be that bad. Ours has frozen once, but we just let the battery run down, and it was fine.

[SecretAgentRat]

Do you have a warrantee with Apple or did you buy your iPod elsewhere?
A friend of mine had the same problem, he sent it to Apple and they sent him a new nano for free.

[guitarjockey111]

for how many ipods apple produces theres always going to be the few that have problems and it sounds like you got one.

[mtlmouth]

The iPod came with a one-year warranty that ran out in June. So... yeah. I think I'm going to send it in (to iPodmechanic) with hope that they can fix it.

[snizzle]

The iPod came with a one-year warranty that ran out in June. So... yeah. I think I'm going to send it in (to iPodmechanic) with hope that they can fix it.

Did you ever do this? How'd it turn out?

[mtlmouth]

Did you ever do this? How'd it turn out?
Ah, I forgot about this thread. Yes, I sent it in to them, and after about a week, I was informed that the iPod had a bad hard drive and that repairs would cost roughly $100. So they bought it from me as a broken iPod (though I haven't gotten the money yet... it's only $20 but I'd still like it) and I wound up getting a 4gb iPod nano.

[AudioAUnderdog]

The exact same thing happened to my and my first 20GB iPod photo last summer, it was nearly a year old and had been heavily used. But luckily it happened one week before my warranty expired, plus I live within a two hours drive of several apple stores. So they replaced it with a refurbished one, which I've had minimal problems with so far. (But just in case, I bought an extended warranty for it. I would highly suggest keeping a warranty on your new iPod, so if it dies you won't be so bad off.)

[guitarjockey111]

yeah i got mine last month and i love it and i had to take it in cause some songs weren't playing and it was casue of the id3 tags. the genius guy told me to convert all my songs to aac but i didnt i researched and did it another way. just any song that doesnt have an album name wasnt playing so just put MISC in the album name and it add's it to your ipod. cause i had all my songs on there and it wasnt showing them all so doing that fixed the probelm.

I still have a year on my warranty so when it gets close to going out im buying the extended warranty i dont want my ipod to die on me. =)