> They fix it all, no problem, everything is easy when it's scheduled by appointment.

The fact that you need to schedule an appointment in the first place is horrible customer service. When I buy a product from NewEgg, if there's anything wrong with it, they immediately ship me a new one and a box to return the old one in, no questions asked. When my ThinkPad started having issues eight months after purchase, they sent me a prepaid return box, fixed it, and sent it back quickly. When I've had problems with MacBooks, I've had to schedule an appointment, drive to the Apple store, wait in line, explain my problem, let them ask a zillion irrelevant questions (the equivalent of 'did you try rebooting?'), and then come back in a few weeks to pick it up. They are hostile to customers when it comes to hardware issues, and they almost never admit that their products are faulty. Look at how long it took them to fix the TouchBar and keyboard failures a few years ago.

Apple will fix your product if it's under warranty, but they won't make it easy, and they won't pull a defective product and re-engineer it until the bad press overwhelms them. They're not great at this aspect of customer service.

Are you serious? Last time I had my Macbook Pro repaired, they sent me a prepaid box, I mailed it to them the next morning, and I had it back in 3 days. Other than a tech personally coming to your house, what else do you expect?

I've lost lots of very valuable information by storing it in a MacBook due to their lack of customer service or acceptable repair times for essential goods like laptops. Never again.

Once they’ve acknowledged a major fault, yeah. But until then it’s denial and nonsense and stupidity. My last Mac was a 2007 MBP - the one with the melty GPU. It’s actually still functional on the third board but the fuss and nonsense around getting the first two replaced when everyone knew there was a common fault (except Apple apparently) was pretty pathetic.

Maybe it's a little unfair to judge them based on a computer from over a decade ago?

My last Mac was a Power Mac 6100/66 and at the time I couldn't have cared less about the Apple III, for instance.

Is there still a way to get that fixed by Apple?

That's only for first-world countries with Apple stores. Without both of these, you are out of luck.

I had an MBP with a fried motherboard, out of warranty and paid for it to be replaced out of pocket (400 eur or so). Some months later Apple contacted me and WIRED money to my bank account to compensate the cost. This was for an Early 2011 MBP and they had GPU replacement program for it after a lot of reports about issues.

All of this in North Macedonia, with no Apple stores (but the fix was done at an authorized reseller). To be honest I was kind of amazed they did that and definitely left a lasting good impression of them.

Given I have some hardware trouble with my current MBP. Can you tell me what the process for the refund is? (I'm being quoted $800 for a battery repair).

Apple offers battery replacement at a fixed price for MBP at their service centres, and the price is $129-$199 in the US depending on which model.

https://support.apple.com/mac/repair/service

    MacBook Pro                               Out of Warranty
    16-inch MacBook Pro                             $199
    15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display         $199
    13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display         $199
    15-inch MacBook Pro                             $129
    13-inch MacBook Pro                             $129
    17-inch MacBook Pro (Vintage)                   $179

    MacBook Air                               Out of Warranty
    13-inch MacBook Air                             $129
    11-inch MacBook Air                             $129

    MacBook                                   Out of Warranty
    12-inch MacBook                                 $199

I'm not in the US.

I wonder who downvoted.

I'm not in the US either.

Where I live Apple offers the same fixed-price battery replacement service but in local currency.

But if I go to a non-Apple store, but an "approved seller" of Apple products, they will quote a much higher price. I challenged them about this once, and they said it wouldn't be cheaper anywhere else, so I showed them the Apple page and they admitted that was much cheaper and I should go to the Apple store.

I told you about the Apple service in case you were being ripped off and would appreciate knowing about the Apple fixed price service, if you are in a country where they do that.

US $ prices were provided because you quoted $800, presumably US $. Other country prices are on the Apple website with a bit of searching. Look up battery service.

Refund method was asked for, which is rather dependent on country. If you're in a less-likely-for-HN country and asking how to get a refund it would make sense to say which country.

If your device is old they consider it “legacy” and won’t fix. Legacy I think is 5 years.

That's a shame. I'm very happy with my 2013 rMBP, but would like to replace the battery. That's the only thing wrong with it.

People are still recommending second hand 2015 rMBPs as the "last good" ones. It would be a pity if they can't have batteries replaced.

You can DIY or get an independent repairer to do it. How to video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lue6lVWhh4o batteries available on ebay, amazon.

I wonder how much a keyboard replacement is.

I think your fix would have to be eligible for some program of theirs like the one they had for the GPU issues [1]. Best to check with an authorized reseller/service and have a look at their current Repair Extension programs [2].

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/20/apple-ends-2011-macbook... [2] https://support.apple.com/exchange_repair

$800 for a battery??? how can a price like that be justified. I recently replaced the battery in my XPS13 myself for $90.

There is no "battery repair" for $800. Can you give us more of the story please?

new 2018 MBP battery can't be repaired and you have to replace the whole casing.

The price of the battery is like $250 and it includes the whole top case. It's the exact same part where the price depends on the CompTIA failure code selected by the technician doing the work.

Yeah but the OP is talking about a 2011 MBP.

One of my laptop speakers broke. They replaced the entire top of the laptop. Didn't ask for an invoice because they saw the laptop was covered by warranty. I went to the apple support page, scheduled an appointment and had my laptop fixed at no cost in a week. This happened two years ago, in Argentina. The laptop was bought in the US.

They replaced an iPhone 6 bought abroad (on their store) by a new one in an Apple Store when it had a problem (which didn’t even warrant remplacement and I think the problem was actually fixed but the staff nor I recognize it at that tule). Whole operating took less than half an hour. Honestly that’s what I call stellar service.

You say that, from what I've experienced their support is far inferior in the UK to what you'd get in the US.

Neither is the USA to be fair.

The USA is losing a lot of first world esprit lately.

UK was aligned with the US in the cold war.

That's true. I live in a country that only recently got an Apple store. Prior to that, the 3rd-party Apple vendors were making a killing with upgrade costs and replacement parts and so on.

Was a definite change in the local market when Apple Store arrived.

I've been in both sides of this. Seems like there's a limited range of issues they consider "valid", which tends to exclude design flaws (c.f. "you're holding it wrong", staingate). Outside of that visual confirmation seems to help a lot, my success rate on the phone is low until I start sending photos (and they still take days for replacements with parts in-stock).

Anecdotally Dell and Lenovo will send technicians on-site to fix the issue. Easy when scheduled by appointment is table stakes; for stuff with iProduct pricing and positioning, they're not doing that great.

Add HP to the list of companies with on site support. I got several components replaced at home in my laptops in the last 14 years.

Do we need to subscribe to any special plans to receive such service? Or do they do that regardless of warranty and when/where the product was bought?

I bought the on site service warranty. It was about 100 Euro for 3 years (as in 33.33 per year) for my zBook 15 back in 2014. It got much more expensive on the fourth year (maybe 100+ per one year), then basically started to cover nothing. I got a quotation for 400 Euro to replace the keyboard. The original backlit one is about 130 Euro, the not backlit one is about 40. Of course the difference is next business day replacement but for a keyboard it's never so vital. I already replaced it myself a couple of times and bought a spare one because they'll run out of parts sooner or later. I keep my old laptop as a spare and kind of know what to buy next, ideally the same laptop, maybe a little lighter and with no number pad.

This is certainly false in my experience. I’ve had prompt repairs done with no questions asked a few times, even replacements of small parts, like a fractured cable.

At least there's some consumer protection laws there.

I had an issue with my 2017 MBP where the speakers would conk out; I've had it fixed under warranty / recall, but because Apple sucks when it comes to repairability they had to replace the whole top cover, keyboard, touchpad, the works.

Same. Never had a problem.

Same here, been through many replacement cycles with Apple, and whenever it was clearly Apples' problem, they replaced the system, no questions asked.

There was the NVIDIA GPU flap, the thermal paste issue, the screen bleed, and even an iPhone - 3 MacBook replacements, and an iPhone, for free, because Apple took responsibility for having designed and shipped a shitty product (really, all were flaws in Apple's supplier/manufacturing).

If, however, I try to get a freebie for having gotten an iPhone wet, well .. bets are off there.

And I think that's only fair really.

How do you let Apple make mistakes "many times", yet still buy their stuff?

If a device I buy fails for what I consider to be a design or manufacturing mistake, I'll be wary of the company. If it happens again, I won't buy more of their stuff.

Because I keep using their stuff, quite proactively, and productively, and when it breaks and its Apples fault, I can go back to them and get a new one, no questions asked, and get back on with using the thing.

vendor lock-in, hard to use anything else. Addicted to Mac ecosystem, lots of data in iCloud, lots of purchased music, videos and apps from their stores? :P

Literally, none of the above in my case. I don't use iCloud, no purchased music or videos, and 'brew' is my app-store. I could switch to Linux in a heartbeat, and probably will, with my next hardware upgrade. But in the meantime, Apple keep me on their platform by providing superlative replacement service.

The nVidia one at least was totally nVidia’s fault (at the time I had a Dell with the same fault that needed two motherboard replacements), and that soured their relationship with Apple to the point that you’ve never since been able to buy an Apple product with nVidia technology in it.

Did you have AppleCare tho?

Nope.

They refused to replace an iPad whose screen shattered after falling from a chair less than two weeks after my wife bought it. One should note that it was specifically recommended to her in the shop as a good device to let the children watch Netflix on. Obviously, it wasn’t fit for that purpose. All they offered is buying the exact same fragile device again at a discount. I was so angry that I contemplated secretly putting “Careful, fragile glass! Breaks very easily.” stickers onto the devices in the shop. :)

It would really be incredible if Apple devices were the only device with unbreakable glass screens. That's why phone cases are ubiquitous. Why should they pay for your negligence? You might have a point if they refused to replace the screen at your cost.

I managed to drop my old Nexus 5X several times (from regular usage height, on a variety of surfaces), and it never even got any obvious scratches.

Screen design are all about tradeoffs, but some people got it right years ago.

Force = mass × acceleration. The larger size of the tablet means that if it fails at an angle where the glass is subject to the impact, the force will be greater. It's possible that tablet glass is designed to withstand a larger force to compensate. I don't have any info on that, anyone has any insight into this?

I also managed to drop my iPhone without it getting a scratch. It does not prove anything, though. Glass is a fragile material and seemingly similar shocks can have very different results. AFAIK most of high-end smartphones use the same gorilla glass.

There are different revisions of the Gorilla recipe, with different tradeoffs.

The 5X in particular also made a bunch of other decisions that helped the glass survive, like having the frame raised slightly past the glass, so that the frame would absorb the impact rather than the glass itself.

I had a Nexus 4, with a glass back and I dropped it and chipped it early on. Since then I use a case, but I've never broken a screen for whatever reason.

Not all glass is equal. There is a trade-off between being scratch-proof (harder glass) and shock-proof (softer). Apple seems to be particularly aggressive in going for the former. Also, Apple tends to sacrifice robustness for elegance. Both design decisions make iPads less suitable for children than the average tablet. My wife’s mistake was to trust the advice of the Apple salesperson who claimed that the iPad is a good choice for children.

I firmly believe that when I buy a phone I take ownership of the phone and this means also responsibility and potential risk of the phone being destroyed through my carelessness. Since Apple is no longer owner of the phone they are only responsible for their own actions with regards to the phone.

That still means if there is a hidden fault in the phone or they brick it by sending an update, they are still responsible in my understanding. But no longer if I give the device to family member and he/she is careless enough to sit on it.

And I firmly believe that if a company sells you a product and claims that it is fit for a particular purpose, you should be able to get your money back if it turns out that this was not the case.

Okay... and you also expect the car manufacturer to replace the car your wife crashed?

When you buy shiny sleek phone with edge-to-edge screen you should understand this is not a phone to be dropped or sat on. It is not possible to fit so much screen, electronics and battery into such sleek enclosure and make it drop resistant. If you need drop resistant phone, there are phones that advertise the feature (see: https://www.techradar.com/best/best-rugged-smartphones)

In other words, dropping an iPhone is not an intended use of the phone.

I would argue that Apple were 100% correct here.

Why? They sold us a product claiming it is fit for a particular purpose and then it turned out this wasn’t true. A device that cannot withstand being dropped from minimal hight is not suitable for children. Period.

Did you have AppleCare?