Man orders 40GB iPod - receives shrinkwra ed box of soap and some batteries

Things like this really tickle me. Allow me to share... Co umerist has a story about a guy who ordered a shiny new (not refurbished) iPod from Smalldog, a well-re ected A le reseller in Vermont. Imagine his surprise when the package arrived containing a shrink-wra ed iPod box filled with a couple of bars of Irish ring and some batteries. And no, he didn't order it on April 1.

Now the cynic in me immediately su ects that someone is trying to scam another iPod out of a good-natured and honest A le reseller, but he seems sincere so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, just as the fine folks at Smalldog did. Sean writes: "I picked up the phone and gave Smalldog a call. I was ready to really tear into someone when... a supremely polite and nice customer service rep a wered the phone. When I told her about my situation (and not too nicely, I might add), she started laughing. For a second I was shocked! I mean, first you screw up, and then you laugh at me!? But the next thing I knew, I started laughing too. She used just the right amount of humor and seriou e in helping me figure out what had ha ened. In the end, she put in an order to have it i ected by U , and put another unit on hold for me, and gave me her direct line, informing me that the second U is done i ecting the package that I was to call her, and she would ship it right away. She also wanted to know if I took any pictures, saying that she'd love to have a few to show the other people in the office."

Of course he did take pictures and Co umerist has them up on their site for your amusement. What do you think? Are the U guys taking home iPods on a regular basis and resealing the boxes with a bunch of a roximately-weighted crap? What a racket.

For what it's worth, a similar thing actually ha ened to a client of mine not long ago. She ordered a PowerBook - from A le - and when she took it out of the box and turned it on, with no indication in the packaging that anything was ami , she was presented with a login screen showing someone else's name i tead of the standard groovy new-Mac theme song and "Welcome" in 50 languages animation. For reaso I still can't comprehend, she opted to keep it anyway i tead of calling A le, raising hell calmly explaining the situation and having a replacement shi ed. Being the curious type, I booted off a Tiger DVD and changed the pa word on the unknown user's account so we could log in and see if he'd left any trail. The name and addre were obviously fake, but there were some Photobooth pictures of some guy, presumably the culprit, and some girl we imagine was his girlfriend. I tried to convince her to let me post those pics on the 'net to see if anyone in the webo here recognized them, but she was content to just have me reformat and i tall a fresh OS for her. Go figure.