Nah, I haven't bought their warranties in years. Mostly because they are too short and rarely cover the cost of fixing the device (which I found out after picking up one of their botched stock of 1st gen MBAs when they first came out).
Are we talking about the same Apple Care warranty that covers any defect not related to negligence? I admit that 3 years is a bit short considering the price of some items (and it's only 2 years on iPhones, scandalous considering their markup), but the whole machine is covered, part and fixing itself. What it doesn't cover is loss of productivity due to their software incompatibilities (Learnt that when they pushed Lion on me without a chance to try it first in my environment).
This is why whenever I call some rep I say, "this is the problem I am having, this is what I am using it for and this is what I have done so far to try and fix it..." before we get to far into it. Granted, I have never used apple tech support and have only been to the Genius Bar a couple times. Usually when I need an iPhone replacement which I have had to have 3 of. I would have never paid for this anyway, but I do feel bad for people like my mom who would need this.
It seems very un-apple like.
Typical phone techs are taught never to assume the customer knows what he does. From wandering on this forum, you probably have a technical knowledge level above the majority of users. The only way tech representatives can make sure operations have been properly performed is to have you repeat them. So much people think they know, and in fact know absolutely nothing. Before starting a "computer care" workshop along with a friend of mine, we never thought the overall computer literacy was so low.
At least OSX updates are free now.
I hope, considering how it has all been on a downward slope since Snow Leopard.
However, Apple should also offer a monthly plan - lets say $39 that gives you unlimited support for up to 25 Apple Devices (ATV, iDevices, Macs, etc) that you or your immediate family owns.
There are some months where a lot happens and paying $19 per incident would be very expensive. At that point, I would just take it to the Apple store.
Also, if a repair is to be requested, I think the chat fee should be applied towards the purchase of the repair cost. Similar to how the Apple store is - you get 15 min of free diagnostic and then given a repair quote.
$39 a month is still much too expensive. Apple devices are supposed to have above-average reliability, and I wouldn't pay another monthly subscription for just 3 Apple-branded devices. That could change if any would be covered, regardless of age, making it effectively a lifetime warranty.
its a move of a company that doubts it can get new customers so lets and squeeze every last cent out of the ones that already bought
Well this is nothing new. Perhaps they started notice at Apple that they haven't concentrated enough on making the software robust enough for professionals and individuals alike. They cut many features that made OS X so comfortable and efficient to use, and are pushing new versions before properly testing them. Snow Leopard was the last one to explicitly build upon "refining" the existing Leopard: no new features, just solid enhancements.
I bet "release few, release often" actually repulsed many users. Wanting to make everything simpler sometimes doesn't cut it: I don't count how many times I've read people experiencing slowness after
upgrading to Mavericks that simply disappeared when they did a
clean install.
