Faulty joystick on X5

[gman001]

I received my X5 two weeks ago and have been overwhelmed by the overall quality. However, the joystick started to act a bit weird yesterday. I have not yet been in direct contact with the company I purchased from as the product has been used and I have had weird experience with iriver, so thought I would get advice from those who know...
Q: Shall I contact Cowon UK (if it exists) and deal with them direct or shall I persevere with trying to contact the third party seller?

I have kept all the original packaging and have a copy of bill of sale. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks all

[NoComp]

IMHO you should ALWAYS contact the producer directly instead of having all the fuzz with retailers and/or importers.

I contacted (called) Cowon-Europe directly and even had a nice little chat with the COWON-Europe Boss and the engineer that fixed my X5 later on.
They're located in Germany btw and they speak english too:

Cowon Europe GmbH
Mergenthalerallee 55-59
Germany - 65760 Eschborn bei Frankfurt/Main
Phone: +49 (06196) 76916-60
http://www.cowon-germany.com

However, you should also know that I sold my X5 just because of its really fault prone joystick-controller, though it wasn't the only reason.

Reason 1: A broken joystick - two months after RMA/repair the symptoms showed up again.(click to the left didn't work every time)

Reason 2: Overall battery-life decreased after 6 months by 50%. (fixed with RMA but a known X5-issue - at least first models)

You know, I'm the kind of person that's able to sell used gadgets in mint-condition because I treat my gadgets like raw eggs. But wearing my X5 in my trousers pocket back then just didn't work well. If you don't want to sell your surely beloved X5 you should buy a decent case that protects the joystick from any stress.

However, my broken Joystick and the 50% worn off battery took 1 and a half weeks for the whole RMA-process (Austria/Vienna --> Germany/Frankfurt --> Austria/Vienna).

Btw, I bought a CREATIVE Zen Vision:M instead cause I was sure that the joystick would fail on me again and again and again. Don't get me wrong, I still think the X5 is one of the best HDD-DAP's around (BBE-Sound!!!), but its failure-prone joystick is/was a complete nogo for me. What a pitty!

Hope I could provide you with some useful information.