On Thursday I wrote about some problems I’m having with my Macbook Pro. I received lots of great feedback in the comments and via email.
After trying several solutions, I still couldn’t get the computer running at a decent speed, or recording audio properly. So, taking kyre’s advice of “the squeeky wheel gets the oil!”, I fired off an email to steve(at)apple(dot)com. I explained in that email what was going on, and how it could be documented that I was having problems here at the site and on the podcast, long before the 3 weeks since my warranty ran out. I also mentioned how unhappy I was that Apple was charging $900 to fix something that other companies could do for under $200.
On Friday afternoon I received a phone call from Apple. The gentleman on the phone was very helpful, and explained to me that the first guy I spoke with gave me the wrong information. As it turns out, Apple will only charge you $900 to replace your hard drive if you damaged it on your own (which still sounds a little steep to me…).
If there is a problem with your Mac that isn’t your fault, and you’re out of warranty, Apple will fix your system for a flat fee of roughly $350. No matter what’s wrong with it. So if they get the machine in and the problem is that the motherboard, the memory, and the hard drive all went out at the same time – they’ll fix all three for a total cost of roughly $350.
He then told me that it sounded to him like the problem with my computer was not the hard drive, but the logic board. He asked me if it had been accidentally damaged, and I told him no, I haven’t had any accidents with it. Then he surprised me.
He said they’d fix it for free.
He told me since the machine was just out of warranty and it was obviously an on going problem they were happy to fix it at no cost me, and asked for my mailing address. So a box is on its way from Apple today for me to put my Macbook Pro in, and it will be sent off to Apple. I will hopefully get it back on Friday good as new.
As a result, blogging may be light on the site this week – the Macbook Pro is my primary machine, and it will be more difficult to blog without it, but I’ll still be posting.
I’m very pleased to see Apple covering it like this, and its just another reason why I love writing about this company.