RMAed after Rockbox

[holysmokes]

Hey guys - I've had my X5L for a year now and a few days after Rockboxing, my player just stopped turning on and wouldn't respond to resetting or hooking it up to computer via USB or subpack. The guys over at Rockbox insist it's a hardware malfunction and nothing to do with them.

I RMAed my unit and got this response:

"The service department has looked at the player and determined that the power circuit board needs to be replaced. Also, since the player had unsupported software installed (Rockbox) the player needs to be thoroughly examined to make sure no other parts have been affected. Because the player is no longer within the one year warranty period there is a cost for repair. Cost is $90 US."

My player was one day out of warranty and I explained this via Live Chat. They were very helpful here and this is a good service if anyone was wondering. The support guy was knowledgable and explained that I needed to pay the $90 because of Rockbox, not because of the warranty being expired.


I'm posting this to let everyone know that Cowon will repair a unit after Rockbox and also to inform the community that support was very helpful.

Too bad about my $90 and I'm having doubts about reRockboxing.

[breakfastchef]

Thanks for posting! This post is sure to ignite some heated discussions. Alas, though, we may never know if Rockbox caused the problem.?

[Zeus's Uncle]

Well, there we have it, it has been settled. Rockbox voids your warranty, third party firmwares are not supported. Whether or not rockbox did indeed cause the problem, installing rockbox in the first place voids the warranty. There have been reports on here about people getting free service after their one year is up if the player has failed under normal usage, so that's a shame for you holysmokes but thank you for the information. I'm very happy I have held off on installing rockbox, especially since I think I might need to RMA for my joystick soon. My ethos would prevent me from lying and I would not leave out this material fact that clearly the company cares about.

[Diego]

Rockbox _did not_ cause the power circuit board to misfunction. You must have used another charger. Of course they're going to charge you if you're using a 3rd party firmware and not the iaudio firmware. $90 seems ridiculous though. However, this will have absolutley no impact on me using rockbox- I'll keep on using it.

And this should not effect people's thoughts on rockbox, because there is no proof that rockbox caused his circuit board to malfunction- Innocent until proven Guilty.

[doniago]

Originally Posted by Diego

Rockbox _did not_ cause the power circuit board to misfunction. You must have used another charger. Of course they're going to charge you if you're using a 3rd party firmware and not the iaudio firmware. $90 seems ridiculous though. However, this will have absolutley no impact on me using rockbox- I'll keep on using it.

And this should not effect people's thoughts on rockbox, because there is no proof that rockbox caused his circuit board to malfunction- Innocent until proven Guilty.

With all due respect, I think you're erring on the side of defending Rockbox. While I think one could say Rockbox _probably_ isn't responsible, there isn't any evidence either way, is there?

The fact is if the OP had not installed Rockbox it's _possible_ he wouldn't have experienced this problem. It is additionally possible that if Rockbox hadn't been installed and the problem had occurred anyway that the OP may have been able to pay less for repairs, or that Cowon might have overlooked the slight warranty expiration.

Innocent until proven guilty makes a lot of sense when talking about human lives, less so when talking about firmware that could brick a DAP and cost you hundreds of dollars.

[timms]

It seems a little fishy that it occured a few days after installing rockbox, had you experienced any problems with your player pre rockbox.

[holysmokes]

No problems pre-Rockbox. I was playing music off of the X5L while it was connected to a computer. It shut down mid-song for no apparent reason.

For the record, I'm not blaming Rockbox for anything. It's quite obvious you use that software at your own risk. And as you have mentioned, it can't be proven that Rockbox had anything to do with the malfunction. It's the classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

[HiMDforMe]

I still have no worries about using rockbox and will continue to do so. especially since holysmokes says it was connected to the computer at the time it broke which makes me think it wasn't a firmware issue at all, let alone rockbox. but it could be that it was damaged earlier and just finally happened to break while it was connected.

[PJH]

Bottom line: Use Rockbox at your own peril. I'll bet Cowon will be looking for any evidence of RB on RMAs going forward. My bet is they will bounce even joystick issues from Rockbox if they think someone abused it playing Doom or other games on it incessantly.

[Alternet]

this may sound kinda stupid.. but i dont know what the letters RMA stand for.. would anyone care to explain?

[doniago]

Return Merchandise Authorization = A bunch of letters/numbers a store/manufacturer gives you before you can return an item to them, to indicate that they've approved the return.

[Alternet]

oh i see.. thanks that clears up a lot of things now.. i was alwasy confused about those letters but not any more

[bazmonkey]

Out of curiosity, if you format the drive and re-flash the firmware, what evidence is there that Rockbox was on a player? I realize most players are too broken by the time they're being sent back for repair to do this, but if you do, can they still tell?

I had to return my x5 (which used Rockbox) because the battery, after only a charge or two, mysteriously won't charge now. It kept saying it was charged. I could manage to coax it to appear to be charging, but it wouldn't end up charging at all after many, many hours. I was able to send it back to the retailer, though. I did accidentally charge it while running Rockbox for a couple hours, and there were warnings about RB's lack of power management for the x5. It all happened too soon after getting it to be able to reliably figure out what was actually wrong.

[doniago]

In the interests of encouraging people to be honest about what firmware they've used, I'd ask people not to mention any permanent modifications Rockbox may or may not make to the X5 in an open forum.

Everyone here should know by now that RB voids their warranty. It's not a one-shot "well, I took RB off my player, so now my warranty's good again" deal, it's a "if I put RB on my player I can kiss my warranty goodbye" deal.

[bk0]

It's out of line to forbid people to talk about what Rockbox does to their players. Of course it's up to the individual to decide how to use that information.

Rockbox makes no permanent modifications to the X5. If you delete the files from the hard drive and flash the official unmodified Cowon firmware it will be back to factory condition.