One San Diego man obviously isn’t a regular Consumerist reader. He bought his wife an iPod for Christmas, and she opened it up to find…four erasers and some specially-cut index cards filling up the spot that’s supposed to cradle the iPod. They’re probably very nice erasers, but you can’t play music on them. Light percussion, maybe.

The strangest part of this story was what happened when the couple took the device back to the Target store where it was purchased. They tried to exchange it for another iPod…and that box was also filled with very expensive erasers.

Usually when this happens, a dishonest customer is involved. That customer buys the electronic device, fills the box with another material that weighs the box down, and returns it to the store.

The customer in this case claims that the Target store blamed a distributor, claiming that the switch happened somewhere between Apple and Target. Did it? We hope that Target investigates, and that more people aren’t receiving boxes of erasers when they bought iPods.

Not-so-merry Christmas surprise for local shopper [KFMB]

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