Killy Billy

I had an "incident" the other day with Billy from Apple's iTunes Support. It's far enough behind me now that I can almost laugh. Almost...

I couldn't delete something from my shopping cart. No big deal--it could have sat there indefinitely without ruining my digital music experience. I had plenty of other stuff in my cart. In fact, I had been placing cool songs in my cart for about a year and a half and had easily over one hundred tracks in my shopping cart awaiting the day when I had $0.99 to download a song or $1.99 to download a video. The occasional dollar actually did pop up, and I was slowly expanding my music library.

A little thought coalesced in my mind. "Wow! There could be other people who really need to get something out of their shopping cart. This is an opportunity to help my favorite company improve their service by reporting a bug. How awesome!"

So I sent a message to iTunes Support:

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can't delete Zuma (an iPod game) from my shopping cart

delete button doesn't work

delete key doesn't work

TrackID: 4473461

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I felt good. "Maybe this will help them polish an already almost perfect application."

The next day I got an email:

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Dear Jeremiah,

My name is Billy and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused. You should now be able to sign in to the iTunes Store and access your shopping cart.

Please note that it was necessary to clear the contents of your shopping cart to resolve the issue you have been experiencing. Due to your cart's inaccessibility, I am unable to provide a list of its contents.

If you have been using your shopping cart as a wish list, you may want to create a playlist with a list of the songs you want from the iTunes Store. You can add song previews to an existing playlist or create a new iTunes playlist to use as your wish list.

For more information on wish lists, please refer to the following article:

Making an iTunes Store wish list
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n107961

Thank you for choosing the iTunes Store. Have a wonderful day Jeremiah.

Sincerely,

Billy
iTunes Store Customer Support
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww

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"Wait! I didn't say anything about login issues!"

I quickly opened up iTunes only to find that my entire collection of potential downloads had, indeed, been obliterated.

[mild expletive in Russian]!

There was no warning shot over the bow. No kindly inquiry as to whether or not I would like to make some alternate list to document my stash of songs that I might eventually pay Apple to download to my computer for my future listening enjoyment.

I sneeringly bobbed my head up and down and mouthed "Oh, and if you've been using your cart as a wish list--TOO BAD! Better luck next time."

Yes--luckily for Billy, I'm beyond feeling hurt about this. It's all water under the bridge. I have made a wish list on my computer that only I can delete. I've started to add back the tracks that I can remember from the previous list. I'm up to about 60 songs--some from the other list and some new ones.

I even made a happy little graphic here for Billy.