Why won't it charge or turn on?

Okay, so I dropped my Ipod in water about 2-3 months ago (the water only got on the back of my ipod) and so then I tried to charge it with the correct charger but it wouldn't charge. So obviously, I couldn't charge my ipod so it died and hasn't turned on ever since ... But then about 2-3 weeks later, I put it in a container of rice because that's what a lot of people told me to do and i did it for 24 hours and it still din't work! I'm not sure if it's because I didn't put it in a bag of rice RIGHT when I took it out of the water.. I tried to talk to apple and they told me to just buy a new one but I want to know why and if I could fix this.