Found Footage: A Philosophical Discourse on Apple Warranty Care

In an unfortunate Wii bowling accident a few months back, I spilled about a pint of water dead middle of my month old $1500 Macbook(it's never good when water is dripping out of your drive slot). I quickly pulled the plug & battery, googled "laptop spill repair", took my Macbook apart, air dusted it and let it dry for a day. Started up the next day good as new - only thing I had to do was buy a new battery(which although fully charged was no longer recognized). It is still working flawlessly with the new battery 2 months later.

And out of curiosity after escaping almost intact from my own stupidity, I looked around eBay and saw that the going price for non-functioning water damaged Macbooks was ~$600(I actually put in a couple bids for it around $400 when I realized I might be a screwdriver and some DI water away from a new Macbook. But $600? I'll buy a refurb for $800).

So, my first recommendation to this guy would have been to try and spend 5 minutes searching the net to fix the thing for free. My second would have been to make the $600 or more off the thing on eBay.

How about an apology for making that stupid achy breakie mac joke??

And while I never took a sledgehammer to a Mac of mine, I have had a helluva time with Apple. My iBook had the infamous logic board failure twice and the hard drive died. I demanded a new machine, which they refused. I told them my iBook will now be relegated to collecting dust because I just didn't have time to deal with losing another week to Apple support repair (each logic board fix took 5 days). Apple corp relations promised I'd have it back in 3 days--they'd have a person pick it up, overnight it to the repair place where they would immediately fix it and overnight it back to me. Plus it would get the retrofitting to make sure the logic board didn't fail again.

Then, in transit, they lost my iBook.

Finally, they offered a replacement. I turned them down and demanded a refund. Which, after a month, they gave me. I threw a couple more hundred at the refund check and got myself a PowerBook. A week after I got the new PB, I got an email from Apple support saying: "We got your iBook and are fixing it now! We'll send it back as soon as it's done!"

Two days later, it was overnighted to me. I sold it to my friend for a few hundred bucks. He had it for three months and the logic board failed again. He threw it away. So, in the end, I lost about two months of productivity on that iBook and easily half the money I'd have made using it (my old PC laptop is such a piece of junk). Yes, I got a PB, but I'd have been happy trade my PB for an iBook that worked.

Apple is a corporation like any other. They're fine when their products work but when their products break, they're just like everyone else. I don't care what's in the fine print.

Make me want to cry just watching it.
I take in broken computers sometimes and fix them.
I wonder why they thought it was damage from a fluid? And telling them to go to another manufacturer? I dunno, that's not an Apple thing.
I hope this isn't true, but then again, that means he destroyed a beautiful MacBook for nothing.
Either way, I'm not happy.

Curse you for getting that damned song stuck in my head.

I also believe he spilled something in his computer and got his bluff called. My daughter spilled a cup of green tea into her MacBook. She turned it off, popped the keyboard out and let it dry overnight. The next day it booted, but would not work with just the battery. I called Apple and they said it would cost $900 to fix it back up to warranty state. I said I was not going to pay $900 to fix a $1200 dollar computer. The guy said I don't blame you, but then he said try another battery. We did, it worked and my daughter has her laptop back and it is working fine. Things can be fixed. They don't have to be smashed.

I used to be halfway man between clients and repair centers for laptops and PDAs...You guys have no idea how many ppl try and claim that they didn't do anything. Fact is, Accidents happen, just because "they" didn't spill something on it, doesn't mean somebody else didn't. Or could be that this guy knew and tried to get away with it...and got mad cause it didn't work.

Aleks: no there isn't. i take apart dozens of apple computers a month.. its what pays my bills. there is no such "indicator" and i'd love to know where you heard that

Michael: its clearly stated that apple warranty does not cover physical damage. you cracked your palm rest, not apple. they are resilient by design, because to take one off you have to stretch it a bit. because they fixed it the first time as a courtesy (this is NOT a warranty repair!!) does not mean that have any obligation to fix it the second time.. you got lucky, and you should appreciate them for doing what they did.

if you bought a lexus, then it "magically" had a dent in the left quarterpanel, do you think lexus would repair it under "warranty"? of course not! that is not faulty manufacturing!

some people really amaze me.........gimme gimme gimme.
no one owes you anything beyond fulfilling their warranty obligation. your situation is not a warranty situation. keep that in mind.

you know, everyone is screaming pity for this guy..i can say from experience (i am an apple portables technician at the largest apple authorized repair center in the country) that he is probably full of shit. i get machines CONSTANTLY "oh, it doesn't boot up.. i woke up one morning and it was off" and when i order a new logic board for it, i go to replace it, and what do i see? corrosion. this happens about 2-3 times a week.
if he REALLY wanted to fight it, and actually DIDN'T spill anything in it, he could have (and should have) requested pictures of the spill damage. (we do that if we send one out to apple to do, and they claim spill)
or if he was going to smash it up anyway, why didn't he open it up and look himself? he's a "systems engineer" so I'd think he was competent enough..
apple doesn't bother to stiff people on the warranty. all warranty work isn't done by /apple/, its done by one of 2 companies, one based in Texas, and one in Tennessee. those companies (unlike us) aren't penalized for using multiple parts in a repair, and in most cases I'll see them replace things that i knew didn't even need to be replaced. they just "did". They are not stingy with repairs... unless its abuse, in which case, sorry - applecare isn't insurance for damage/abuse, its a warranty from defect.

He probably spilled his seed while watching porn late one night and forgot about it.

I guess things like this happen when someone doesn't take their meds.