Apple is iPain in the Arse.

I purchased an ipod touch 16G 2 gen for Needles a couple of months back. It was to be a Xmas present for Needles and we waited until Dec. 23 rd to open the item. Upon opening the iPod and syncing it with Needles computer it seemed fine for about 15 sec. or so and then the dreaded white screen of death. I called Apple and the young man told me how to reset the iPod by pressing the button on the top left of the ipod and the bottom button and hold for 10 sec. After I did this the screen bounced back with the Apple logo. I hung up with the Apple phone support person and just as I did the screen went white again. I tried to reset the iPod several times and when that didn't help I called Apple again. After being on the phone with another person for 15 to 20 minutes we did the restore on the iTunes program. After starting the restore I was told to call back if this didn't resolve the problem. The restore took about 20 minutes or so I checked the iPod and while restoring the screen started to flicker. I called Apple for a third time and talked with a lady who instructed me to remove all Apple programs from the computer, reinstall all Apple programs to the computer and then do yet another restore in iTunes and the final result was that the computer couldn't detect the iPod. All in all I was on the phone with Apple for around 3 hours. After this I was on hold for another 10 minutes until I got to talk with a supervisor which told me to email a couple of diagnostic files from the computer to him. After this was done I was told since it was the holiday that it would be next Wed. before I heard anything back from their TECH dept. It turned out to be about 10 days later that I finally got a call from the supervisor. He shipped a box to me so that I could send the Ipod back to Apple. I received the box on the 6th and shipped it back the next day. We got an email that the item was replaced and was sent back to us. The problem now was that when they shipped it back they sent it Direct Signature. This means that someone has to be here to sign. No print out a signature page form the website and sign it so that they can leave it at the door. FedEx would deliver 3 times and then the package would go back to Apple. They tried to deliver it last Thursday. No one was home to sign. They tried again Friday and still we were working and not going to take a day off to sign for a package. Today Needles was able to stay home for MLK day and she was finally able to sign for the package on the 3rd attempt. I already made up my mind that if this didn't get delivered today due to some screw up and it went back to Apple then I was going to demand my money back. I am glad Needles now has her Ipod but I a feed up with Apple and the way they take care of their customers. This will be the last Apple product I purchase.