01.29.07
Apple Care is Not So Nice
Well, my macbook died last week. I woke up one morning and it just refused to boot at all. No startup chime, no fans, no sound at all. I took it to the Apple Store, and the Genius was quite efficient it creating a repair ticket and assuring me they’d ship it out and have it repaired. I checked the status of my repair today and it said “on hold - need information.” I called up Apple Care, and they slapped me with a repair bill over $700. Apparently, they are claiming that the reason my Mac stopped working is spill damage. I was completely floored about this. I didn’t spill anything on my Mac, it just stopped working. I asked for a supervisor, and was transferred to someone else. The supervisor refused to say anything other than “spill damage isn’t covered by the warranty.” I tried several times to explain that I didn’t spill anything on the mac, and that it just stopped working. She said something to the effect that the spill damage was a fact and that I was welcome to purchase another brand of laptop if I wasn’t happy with their policies.
Now, I loved my Mac very much. I tried to convert anyone and everyone who ever asked me about my mac. Now, though, I’m telling everyone not to buy a Mac, since they won’t warranty the product. To add insult to injury, a friend of mine who I was telling about this let me in on his story. He had a G4 tibook that he spilled and entire Dr. Pepper on. Apple happily replaced his entire laptop without even a question. How does that work? He actually spilled something on it, told them he did it, and they replaced it. I didn’t spill anything on mine, but they want over $700 to repair it because of “spill damage.”
If Apple doesn’t repair or replace my macbook, I will be making a video to put up on YouTube, and linking it to a post that details this incident. The video will be of me taking an 8 lb. sledgehammer to my useless macbook, and recommending anyone that wants a macbook to buy a cheaper pc laptop that can be replaced for less than the cost of a repair of a macbook. Don’t get me wrong, I love the product quite a bit, but if this is typical of Apple Care’s service, even if you buy the extended warranty, I don’t need it. I can buy 2 HP laptops for the price I spent for the single Macbook, and have a spare ready to go if and when my primary fails. I’d run linux on them for sure, since that’s as close as I’ll get to Mac OS X on a PC. I’m really rather disappointed and angry about this entire situation. Why did my friend get an entire new laptop, 2 years after he bought it, when he spilled soda on it, yet I can’t get a repair done for something that was beyond my control? I feel completely shafted right now, especially considering all the kind words I have given to Apple ever since I bought my Macbook.
jayezero said,
June 21, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’m sorry that you had the same exact experience that I had. If can be very frustrating. The deal for me was that my screen failed and they said it was spill damage. I’m able to use it with an external monitor and everything but the display works perfectly. I asked them about this and they said that it’s possible that it could have effected one thing and if I wanted the screen fixed that I needed to pay 1,100.00. Totally insane. To my surprise they where extremely uncaring and didn’t seem to be in listening mode. Best of luck to you.
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December 5, 2008 at 9:34 pm
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jred said,
February 19, 2009 at 11:40 pm
My daughter put a movie in her 2 month old macbook pro and the white screen of death with a question mark came up. We bought a 3yr warranty plan on it so she took it to the Tyson Corner Apple store in Virginia. They called here 2 days later at 9 pm, they close at 9:30, they said it had red sticky stuf inside. She is furious. She doesn’t drink anything red, doesn’t let the mac out of her site, has had nothing sticky on the outside as evidence of a spill, no sticky keys, drive, or port problems. So of course they are saying that this voids the warranty and will cost $1,200 to fix and reinstate the warranty. We are in S. Korea or I would be there myself. I’m seething - how can the drive be “covered” in red sticky stuff and have no other evidence of its presence or problems? Do they really think we are that stupid? We told to take a friend that is a computer hardware tech with her and her camera to pick it up. I find it hard to believe.