Although it was a local seller (same country), I would still be out of pocket sending the player back. Sellers is only offering a refund at this stage anyway and chances are I'd get a dud in return.

I've fooled around with my player a bit more, and no matter how I structure the files and folders (tried everything in root\music, renaming all files to 01.mp3, 02.mp3 etc.) I just can't get more than 293 files successfully recognised by the player. Is that too bad? No. I only have 100-200Mb of free space, so that's only 40 or 50 songs I'm potentially missing out on.