Fuck Left AirPods

Last November I had an issue where my left AirPod (second generation Pro) would occasionally fail to charge in the case and I’d wake up to find it dead. Not every day, but it was happening enough that it was becoming a real nuisance. 

I contacted Apple support, who had me bring it to Select (an authorised reseller, we have no actual Apple Stores here in the Republic of Ireland). They replaced the AirPod, for over €112, which is a ridiculous amount of money on top of the €279 that the original set cost, but I just wanted the problem solved… but a few weeks later, I woke to a dead AirPod once again. It seems pretty evident to me that the issue is with the case, it seems highly unlikely that the brand new left AirPod would fail so quickly in exactly the same fashion.

I spent weeks being sent in circles trying to get Apple or Select to admit the issue was misdiagnosed and the repair had failed. Multiple calls in which I was asked to reset my AirPods to see if that fixed the problem (how could I possibly know, it happens intermittently, without any pattern). After taking hours out of my day on more than one occasion to visit Select, eventually a very kind Apple support guy said to send it to Apple directly. So I send it off, go another week without my AirPods, and returned to me is my original AirPods case and two fresh new AirPods. 

That was in January. I just sat down in front of my Mac to see the Battery Widget pinned to my desktop showing a left AirPod with a sad red arc above it. 

AirPods Pro offer an incredible experience when everything works smoothly, but my god, I have never owned a more frustrating Apple product in the 20 odd years I’ve been using them.

Right AirPod, I’m sorry you got caught up in this.