Defective Right Speaker Pod

My right speaker pod had gotten hot a couple of times over the last week. Yesterday it started making a ticking noise with some soft static but no other sound - it was really hot at the same time. I immediately shut it down and made a Genius Bar appointment at the Flatirons Crossing store. They ran some sort of diagnostic but all the hardware checked out. They didn't have any other ideas on how to trouble shoot it at the store. They said they haven't heard of this problem yet even though I shared other community posts about it. They asked me to wipe it so they could send it in for repair - said it would be 3-5 days before I got it back. This morning I received a call saying that they didn't have any boxes available to send it back to Apple in and that it would be over a week before the boxes arrive and potentially a couple of weeks before I get it back. WTH? No boxes to send a defective unit back to the mothership for repair? I'm pretty disappointed right now as I've been using it everyday since I received it on 2/2. I realize that I'm a week past my return period but felt they should just send me a new unit... No dice though :(