iPod Mini Woes

Awh pish, my iPod Mini is broken. It's been playing up for a while now. At first I thought the battery life had fallen apart but it now appears that it hasn't been charging properly.

The charge icon would come up, the battery would appear to charge but it would never end. When disconnected the fuel gauge would show it to be full but within an hour it would die with the gauge still showing full. It then required a hard reset to bring it back. Now iTunes wont recognise it's connected, maybe it's the cable that's buggered, either way it's going back.

I remember reading Apple's terms and conditions when ordering and being quite shocked at the return procedure and the charges they would levy. We'll see, I'm not known for paying for other peoples mistakes. I'm off to Apple's website now to see about returning it for repair, wish me luck.

Update: Well, I've requested a return for repair (they'll send me a shipping box) but they don't want the cable. If the cable is the problem they'll come back and say the iPod is fine and charge me?!!? I have a really bad feeling about this.

I then dicovered Apple's iPod Mini forum, good grief this is a busy place with over 100 posts today alone, many of which describe my exact problem with dozens of posts relating to battery issues. What the feck is going on? The 2G iPod mini is claimed to have 18 hours battery time but I've never seen even half of that in the past 3 months. I've got an even worse feeling now.