Movie I rented from iTunes disappeared

Hey People,

I rented a movie from iTunes yesterday and I transferred it to my iPhone 3G. Right after that, my iPhone 3G died and I had to reinitialize it because it had some sort of fatal error.

I connected it to iTunes and it said I had to reinstall all the software onto my iPhone. I did that and then basically had to set up my iPhone from the backup (which thankfully I made). HOWEVER, the movie I rented (which I did not watch yet) is gone (aka not on my iPhone or in my iTunes).

What recourse do I have? I want to DL the same movie, but I don't want to have to pay the $2.99 for a movie I never watched because my iPhone committed suicide.

Please help.

1 Good Karma credit* to anyone who helps me solve this problem.

Kind regards,

Trapzilla

* = karma is payable in the next lifetime

I called Apple and explained the situation and they put it into my download queue and I was able to re-download it at no charge.

That was a little TOO easy. Maybe they are being nice cause so many people are pee-o'd about the extra charge they are trying to gank us for with the iTunes Plus bullshyte.

Thanks Apple for some great problem solving skillz!

I'm sure this happens often, which is why they're willing to let you download it again.

Quick question, I hear people renting movies from iTunes, is that like renting for a month or what not or renting you actually buy the movie? If its renting for a month then wouldn't that explain why its gone? -confused-

No, if you rent a movie from iTunes, you get the movie for a month. Once you hit PLAY, then you have 24 hours to watch the movie, then it disappears. If you download it, then don't watch it for 28 days, on the 29th day it disappears.

For me, since I downloaded it and then transferred it to my iPhone, when my iPhone crashed and I had to reset it, it was gone as it had been put on my iPhone and was not in iTunes at all. Seems it cannot be in two places at once.

using mac osx 10.6.6 this worked for me:
iTunes Store: Finding missing purchases and downloads