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stillwater

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 1, 2004
218
0
Rowley, MA
I took my Macbook Air to the Genius bar last week because the battery was failing after only 18 charge cycles. System profiler was reporting battery capacity of only 2700 milliamp hours instead of the expected 5000 or so with battery health showing "fair".

The Mac genius had to order a new battery since they do not yet have them in stock. Meanwhile, I continued to use my Air with it's weak battery through the weekend.

Yesterday I took it back to the Apple store so they could put the new battery in. When the phone rang yesterday afternoon I was expecting to hear that my repair was done and I could pickup my machine. That was not what happened.

The repair tech informed me that during the procedure, the cable connecting the trackpad to the main circuit board had been "nicked" and no longer functioned. He went on to say that a new upper case had been ordered and that when it came in, they would install it an then give me a call. He was very apologetic about damaging my computer and assured me that the repair wasn't a difficult job.

My response was "But aren't all the innards of the Macbook Air attached to the upper case? Doesn't that mean that you pretty much have to rebuild the whole computer?". I was not not liking the sound of this at all but at the time I just kind of said "Alright".

When I told my wife about the phone call, her immediate reaction was "They need to give you a new computer. You've had it for a little over a month and they want you let them rebuild it after they broke it doing a simple battery replacement?". Well, That really put things in perspective for me so I called the store back and after being put on hold a few times, I was eventually able to talk to a manager, who agreed to give me a new computer.

So, a happy ending for me. :)

And, to be fair to the repair tech at the Apple store, mine was the first Macbook Air brought in for a battery replacement. They may not have gotten much training on these machines yet.

Well, that's my story. Any thoughts?
 

clayj

macrumors 604
Jan 14, 2005
7,612
946
visiting from downstream
It sounds like the right thing happened. Accidents and mistakes do take place during repair work, and if you make your case logically, you can often get what you really want versus just accepting what is offered to you.

It's not like Apple's gonna toss the machine in the trash; they'll repair it and refurb it and sell it as used through the refurb store. No big loss to them, and they keep customers happy. They might take a small financial hit, but the benefit in terms of people hearing that they did the right thing more than makes up for that.
 

albert1028

macrumors 6502
Jun 29, 2007
281
13
Good call from your wife telling you to call them back to ask for a new computer.

Now my rant, these people who work at apple stores (NOT Corporate) are stupid as heck. As a previous electrical/mechanical engineer designing computers, these computers are not hard to open up and especially replace batteries, i have no clue how they could have cut the wires. That goes to show the lack of education of these "technicians", no offense, they aren't even worthy to be called genius's or even engineers, maybe that's why they are not worthy of working for apple corporate as an engineer. Maybe apple needs to higher better skilled technicians instead of wannabees.


I took my Macbook Air to the Genius bar last week because the battery was failing after only 18 charge cycles. System profiler was reporting battery capacity of only 2700 milliamp hours instead of the expected 5000 or so with battery health showing "fair".

The Mac genius had to order a new battery since they do not yet have them in stock. Meanwhile, I continued to use my Air with it's weak battery through the weekend.

Yesterday I took it back to the Apple store so they could put the new battery in. When the phone rang yesterday afternoon I was expecting to hear that my repair was done and I could pickup my machine. That was not what happened.

The repair tech informed me that during the procedure, the cable connecting the trackpad to the main circuit board had been "nicked" and no longer functioned. He went on to say that a new upper case had been ordered and that when it came in, they would install it an then give me a call. He was very apologetic about damaging my computer and assured me that the repair wasn't a difficult job.

My response was "But aren't all the innards of the Macbook Air attached to the upper case? Doesn't that mean that you pretty much have to rebuild the whole computer?". I was not not liking the sound of this at all but at the time I just kind of said "Alright".

When I told my wife about the phone call, her immediate reaction was "They need to give you a new computer. You've had it for a little over a month and they want you let them rebuild it after they broke it doing a simple battery replacement?". Well, That really put things in perspective for me so I called the store back and after being put on hold a few times, I was eventually able to talk to a manager, who agreed to give me a new computer.

So, a happy ending for me. :)

And, to be fair to the repair tech at the Apple store, mine was the first Macbook Air brought in for a battery replacement. They may not have gotten much training on these machines yet.

Well, that's my story. Any thoughts?
 

NC MacGuy

macrumors 603
Feb 9, 2005
6,233
0
The good side of the grass.
Good call from your wife telling you to call them back to ask for a new computer.

Now my rant, these people who work at apple stores (NOT Corporate) are stupid as heck. As a previous electrical/mechanical engineer designing computers, these computers are not hard to open up and especially replace batteries, i have no clue how they could have cut the wires. That goes to show the lack of education of these "technicians", no offense, they aren't even worthy to be called genius's or even engineers, maybe that's why they are not worthy of working for apple corporate as an engineer. Maybe apple needs to higher better skilled technicians instead of wannabees.

Not unusual. I've sent a few in for repair and some times, they come back like they were never touched but repaired. Good..

Two other times, I wish they would have sent me the parts. I know I could have done a better job. Dirty, fingerprints, crossthreaded screws, misaligned case. Bad. Both were from Tenn. repair depot.
 
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