Birthday girl gets two rock-filled iPod boxes

We're tempted to believe this story just isn't true, but if the details are indeed factual, we're a bit flabbergasted to say the least. Turns out, a teenager's mother scurried to Target in order to snap up a video iPod for her daughter's upcoming birthday, and she put it on a Target credit card in order to receive a discount. Upon opening it up, the gal's 14th birthday party took a turn for the worse as Regan Ritter found nothing but rocks packaged neatly inside. After demanding a refund and getting rejected, store employees were able to locate another iPod at a different Target location. As you can probably guess, that box was also stuffed with rocks. Target still refused to refund the lady's dough and insisted that she blow the $350 on other store merchandise instead. As it stands, Ms. Ritter is expecting some higher-ups to contact her and truly resolve this, but there's no word as to whether or not Regan ever acquired an iPod from anywhere else.

[Via Techmeme]

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 15th 2007 7:15PM]

I would have been glad to take a refund less the 10%, after all I only paid the sales price less 10% to begin with. Really and exchange is what I wanted but there were no others in stock anywhere in the area! Read my comment on "filling in a few of the blanks" that I posted on here today... maybe you all will stop accusing me of something, I am the victim... really~!

[JL Posted Oct 16th 2007 4:56PM]

For what it's worth, I believe your story. I find it kind of sad that people who don't even know you just go off and assume the worst. I suppose it's just another sign of how cynical and mistrustful we've become in our society these days. I bought an off-brand mp3 player for a female friend as a birthday gift. When she opened it it was missing the usb transfer cable. I took her with me back to the Target that I bought it from and asked for an exchange, explaining the situation. Showed them the packaging, asked them to inspect it. They did and let me exchange it. I even asked them to open the exchanged one to make sure it had a cable inside, which it did. I assume that Target's exchange/return policy is supposed to be consistent across its stores but from what you've related that may not be the case. I'm sorry that you and your daughter had to go through what happened and hope that you are able to resolve the issue. If I may ask, did you report them to the Better Business Bureau as well??

Good luck..

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 20th 2007 5:18PM]

Regan is one of my friends and this is a true story. She told me she got to buy 350 bucks worth of stuff at target and after the story of her rip off went big target said they'd give her a free ipod. looks like it's going to turn out better than ever. they don't shop there anymore. and if you were wondering there was a factory seal on it but it's not hard to re-do those

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 21st 2007 11:43PM]

For the record, I still have had no apology nor offer to receive a free ipod as stated in one of these comments. Neither Target nor Apple has done anything about this. Still amazed at the lack of effort to make things right. Thank you to the media for all of your support!
Melanie Ritter

[Lockheed Posted Dec 27th 2007 3:15PM]

dumb as a ... (fill in the blank)