[MacEachaidh]

Hi greenapple,
I've replied to you in other threads, too, but I wanted to jump in here and say I hear your frustration and disappointment with the Story, and I certainly share it.

I'm a bit stumped for knowing what to do about it. I've e.mailed the tech support people at iRiver in the US, and just had a reply back that made me literally gasp at the degree to which I think the bloke who replied has missed the point(s) totally. (Intentionally or not, I can't be sure.) He just didn't seem to get at all that the device not being able to handle .DOC files, for instance, in any way at all that made them readable on that system, was even a problem for a user, let alone something that needed to be passed on to the developers as an issue that must be addressed. I think sometimes tech support people who *don't* have an acceptable response to problems with the product they're supporting adopt a tone of what used to be called "dumb insolence", and try to bluff you out by not being willing to acknowledge there's any problem at all ... when all I really want in this situation is to know the company is taking note of the fact that they've fallen short of their own marks (they claim this device supports .DOC files; by any functional definition, it absolutely doesn't) and will be working to fix it -- in some way that doesn't require me to buy a new "improved" version of the hardware !!

It's a bit frustrating when the only contact point companies give is tech support people, who (understandably) don't want to hear complaint, but whose task it is to answer or dismiss concerns of a user and mark them off as completed, as quickly as possible. It's not a system that works towards actually addressing shortcomings in the product.

So if you, or anyone reading this, has contact details for someone at iRiver that's willing to hear customer concerns about their device and make a reasonable response, or better still make a reasonable effort to fix them (!!), I'd be very glad to hear about it.