If I unplug my phone charger from the wall and still leave it attached to my phone, the red led light still stays lite up. So it pulling electricty from the phone.
I have now tested your theory and found that it doesn't duplicate what happens when I leave the iPod in the car for the same timeframe. I plugged fully charged iPod into a Belkin wall charger for about an hour. Then I unplugged the charger from the wall (the light on the charger went out immediately) but left the iPod plugged in. Approximately 42 hours later - i.e. a couple of minutes ago - I checked it. Predictably the iPod fires right up and shows full battery. It's currently charging back to full capacity, I expect this to take minutes rather than hours.
So to summarize my experiments thus far, the following will run a fully charged iPod battery dead, and has done so at least half a dozen times now:
-using it normally via MDI cable, turning it off,
leaving it plugged into the car, shutting off the car, activating the alarm, waiting ~48hrs
And the following will not run a fully charged iPod battery down more than an estimated 5-10% in the same timeframe:
-using it normally via MDI cable, turning it off,
unplugging the MDI cable from the device but leaving the other end plugged into the car, shutting off the car, activating the alarm, waiting ~48hrs
-using it normally via MDI cable, turning it off,
unplugging the MDI cable from the car but leaving it plugged into the device, shutting off the car, activating the alarm, waiting ~48hrs
-using it normally via MDI cable, turning it off,
removing the device from the car but leaving it plugged into an unplugged Belkin wall charger via USB cable, shutting off the car, activating the alarm, waiting ~48hrs
-using it normally via MDI cable, turning it off,
removing the device from the car but leaving it plugged into an unplugged Dell laptop via USB cable, shutting off the car, activating the alarm, waiting ~48hrs
Someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong - my only conclusion as of now is that the car is sucking power out of the iPod, and that it's not normal.
Thanks!