That's odd because my old MBP had the same issue and I had also replaced the drive with an SSD. I was fully prepared to put the original hardware back in, but the Apple tech diagnosed and fixed the video issue without any comment on my changes.

Do you live in the US? All the positive Apple Support stores I hear come from the US. This was in the UK. I've also had meh Apple Support experiences in Sweden and Japan.

I do live in the US. I have owned MBPs for years, and with or without AppleCare I have always received good service from Apple. My only complaint is they often have to send the computer away to do a mainboard fix, and it takes a few days.

Ive had excellent support in the apple stores I've been to. Out of warranty support, people going out of their way to help, etc.

Lucky.

I've had a battery that was 10 cycles out of warranty and OS X started throwing up scary warnings but nope, it's out of warranty. A charger that just up and died, they did replace it but not after a 20 questions interrogation. When it's a clear problem they've been friendly, but the repair still takes a week since they don't have the parts or expertise in-store.

And I'm super-friendly to support staff - back in the days when I used Palm and Sony Ericsson gear, the would repair user-fault stuff for me no questions asked.

I've heard similar things from others in the EU. And all the love stories I hear are from the US.

Chargers are the other thing, I've gotten way more replacements than I should have, pretty much no questions asked. Both in and out of warranty as its a design failure not a case of normal wear and tear.

This can be down to the individual and their customer service 'ethics'. Having done helpdesk myself on a team I saw a few things going on - one colleague viewed all customers as idiots andwould push back/blame them in an authoritarian manner, another colleague wasn't actually that good at thinking off script so, although he would have liked to have gone the extra mile, he could not. Only a minority of the team empathised with the customer in a way where 'terms and conditions' were interpreted as needed. It all depends on who you get, what mood they are in and the time of day (5.25 p.m. and, with the office closing you aren't going to get a decent hearing).

It depends when. 4-5 years ago, Apple techs were great to work with. That started going downhill, probably after people scammed them out of too many phones.

Now you get this bizarre interrogation thing from them. You need to be really firm/aggressive or you'll be stuck there for an hour going through the various scenarios that you device has gotten wet. ("I am running late, get your GM and we can chat about why a failed iMac DIMM has nothing to do with water.")