I have the exactly same problem. I've used portable players for 30 yrs, and have never ran into headphones with such a weakly designed and built headphone jack. I got my first set exchanged, and happily received new headphones believing that I just had got a bad specimen. Well, the next ones broke just as easily, and now my retailer doesn't want to replace them. I think it is totally unacceptable for headphones costing 100.