That's been my experience also. In my case the replacement wasn't even done in the same region of the country, or by Apple employees, although the turnaround was pretty quick when you take that into account.
I dumped a glass of water on a MacBook Pro keyboard earlier this year, and took it to the local Apple Store (in DC) under AppleCare+. After verifying that it in fact wouldn't boot, they told me to leave it for repair and they'd update me. I picked it up about a week later repaired.
Based on the PDF documentation I got with the pickup, they shipped it to a third-party repair shop in Houston (CSAT Solutions), which removed every part that had tripped the liquid sensor, and replaced them with new parts (logic board, touch ID board, I/O board, and "top case with battery"). The repair shop then shipped the resulting mostly-new laptop back to the Apple Store in DC, where I picked it up.
Re:Business Essentials
by chrisseaton on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @05:28PM
(#29181818)
I'm not some kind of power-customer - just a normal consumer. They always say 'sorry we'll fix that' and fix it then and there or they say 'sorry can't fix it immediately we'll swap it' and I walk out with a new one in minutes. If they wanted to keep it over night I'd be extremely surprised.
You are getting macbooks swapped out at apple? I'm not a power customer either, they just take the laptop away and tell me its ready next friday. Sounds like the fixes they do then and there aren't hardware issues in your case.
Re:Business Essentials
by chrisseaton on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @05:38PM
(#29181910)
I've definitely had at least a battery swapped then and there. If it's anything more than that yeah I guess they're defaulting to swapping it. I'm not complaining about the policy!
That must have been nearly 10 years ago back before they started gluing the battery to the topcase
Re:Business Essentials
by chrisseaton on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @06:09PM
(#29182227)
You only need a normal consumer heat gun to detach them. It's a big hair dryer. It's not the rocket science people make it out to be. I guess they have one in the back.
I wonder what sort of issues you had that could have been fixed in 30 minutes or what sort of replacements you've been given? That's not been my experience at all at apple stores and I've been bringing them screwed up laptops to fix for ten years. I've never been just handed a replacement laptop that day, its always been send away the computer for at least a week and they try gutting it and putting in all new parts vs troubleshooting the underlying issue and replacing the perhaps one bad component that is the root cause.