$2.119

Watchful viewers of this site will notice that the simulated back of my iPod in the entry a couple of days ago has changed. It now says “60GB” instead of “20GB”. Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, Darla mentioned that if she had thought longer about my mantra on the back of the iPod, she would have added a little bit. I’d already been thinking about changing my order to an iPod Photo, so that was a good excuse! 🙂 Mostly, I wanted the larger drivespace, and it would give me some ability to store photos if needed, although some of the capabilities I want aren’t quite there…. yet. So, off I was to the phones.

I had a great conversation with Apple employee Thomas, who informed me that the best way to do this was for him to cancel the iPod order, and then for me to get on the web to re-order. Unfortunately, the iPod dock I ordered was already on the way, so there wasn’t much we could do about that. So the cancellation was in place, the re-order of the 60GB iPod Photo was done, and I was giddy.

This morning, I got an e-mail indicating that my 20GB iPod would be upgraded at no charge to an upgraded model. Upgraded model? My 20GB iPod? Didn’t I cancel that order?

Another call to Apple, this time with Apple employee Kimberly. Kimberly could see that the order for the 20GB iPod had been cancelled, so no problem there. I asked her about the upgraded model my e-mail had mentioned. Apparently, the 20GB model had been upgraded to a color screen, and photo capabilities. No extra charge for this functionality either!

She also mentioned a pricing action on the iPod Photo…. it went down by $50. Sheepishly, I asked if I would get that discount, and she said I would. Ya-hoo! She even went farther, noticing that I had a dock on the way from the original order, and that I had a new dock on order with the iPod Photo. She offered up a free return on the “old” dock on Apple’s nickel. Sweet, sweet, sweet.

So what happened today at Apple? Well, all regular iPods (not Mini or Shuffle) now have color screens and photo capabilities, along with podcasting capabilities. The 30GB iPod Photo is gone — in fact, there are no iPod Photo models any longer. All the white models are just iPods. With the lowered price on the 60GB model, there’s only $100 difference between the 20GB and 60GB models, and capacity is the only difference between. Why wouldn’t you cough up the extra C-note and triple the capacity?

So, Apple not only did a cool thing, but they did me right with my order that happened on the cusp of this change. Since I ordered a model that didn’t change, I assume it’ll come in quicker than the 20GB revised model would — looks like my ship date is July 5th, so I might even have it before the following weekend.

I gotta tell ya, I was expecting all kinds of trouble in making this change, having been accustomed to the evil empires that big corporations usually are. This was easy — it just worked!