That sounds pretty awful. Luckily I haven’t personally had any keyboard troubles (I’ve had it since release and travel with it frequently), but if I had I’d probably be a lot less positive about it (:

Getting the keyboard fixed isn't dependant on Apple Care. They have a 4 year program to fix any issues, outside of warranty.

I wonder what happens if you have a keyboard issue AND your logic board dies at the same time after the first year? Will they replace the logic board for free, given that the keyboard was malfunctioning?

Happened to me (in Europe).

Keyboard was replaced twice. Logic board died too (along with the data on SSD since it's soldered on).

All repairs were done for free by the Apple store, but of course I lost about 10 days of work (or at least I didn't have my main laptop).

If they can't boot up the machine they won't fix the keyboard since they can't test it.