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Anyway AppleCare Can Replace My Battery? (For Free)

HappyDude20

HappyDude20

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
3,688
1,479
Los Angeles, Ca
I've had my Macbook since December of 2006 and have to admit that with over 744 charge cycles later the battery is doing better than i expected.

With full brightness on and just surfing the web, the battery will last a good 2 hours or more, depending on what i'm doing. If it's just videos, like Hulu then the battery will last less than an hour.

But I read somewhere, I think on these forums but can't find it again...that if I still have AppleCare I can ask for them to replace this old battery with a new one at no cost.

I only ask cause i'm on the road a lot and hate it when my Mac is close to dying and i'm on a roll writing an essay or something important.
 
You can just bring it in the the genius bar and ask. They will just plug the computer into a battery tester program they run off an iPod and if it comes back "bad" and you are under AppleCare they will give you a new one. It sounds like yours is fine though.
 
what does the testing determine?

and if anyone knows...whats the battery life on the original white macbooks?

something i find weird is my frend just bought an HP w/ vista and when watching a movie, if the screen is at its brightest the battery only lasts for like 40 min. and its a brand new computer.
 
Wait, so you have 700+ cycles on your battery and still getting decent life out of it and knowing it's going to die soon, you want to ask Apple for a new battery? I don't think greedy is the word. If there's nothing wrong with it and you have 700+ charges, there's no testing, it's end of life.

(Maybe I don't understand the OP, but lets think about it here, you have AppleCare and you think Apple gives you free batteries every time you've consumed one? I don't mean to be rude, but WTF? LOL)
 
iLog.Genius said:
Wait, so you have 700+ cycles on your battery and still getting decent life out of it and knowing it's going to die soon, you want to ask Apple for a new battery? I don't think greedy is the word. If there's nothing wrong with it and you have 700+ charges, there's no testing, it's end of life.

(Maybe I don't understand the OP, but lets think about it here, you have AppleCare and you think Apple gives you free batteries every time you've consumed one? I don't mean to be rude, but WTF? LOL)
Click to expand...

i've just heard that if you have AppleCare, and if you aren't a d*ck when you call them up they'll gladly replace the battery for you.
 
HappyDude20 said:
i've just heard that if you have AppleCare, and if you aren't a d*ck when you call them up they'll gladly replace the battery for you.
Click to expand...

Absolutely untrue. Batteries are consumable, once they fail to hold a charge, that's it you have to go buy a new one. The only time Apple gives out batteries is if you have AppleCare and the battery is faulty or you're just outside of your warranty and you have a faulty battery. If you know someone who did get one, that was done out of satisfaction for whatever reason but having AppleCare has nothing to do with it.
 
iLog.Genius said:
Absolutely untrue. Batteries are consumable, once they fail to hold a charge, that's it you have to go buy a new one. The only time Apple gives out batteries is if you have AppleCare and the battery is faulty or you're just outside of your warranty and you have a faulty battery. If you know someone who did get one, that was done out of satisfaction for whatever reason but having AppleCare has nothing to do with it.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Sorry OP, usually they'll replace the batteries if it appears defective and has under 300 cycles. You've already gotten double what most people would expect. No free replacement.
 
voyagerd said:
Apple replaced my battery and AC adapter for free. I didn't even have AppleCare and my comp was out of warranty.
Click to expand...

That's fine. I'm not going to say it's impossible that Apple will never do it out of satisfaction, you probably had a reason or whatever and Apple was willing to make you or keep you a happy customer. But battery replacement is not something Apple does because you have AppleCare on a daily basis. The way the OP worded his post made it seemed that Apple will give you a new battery because you've used up the first one.
 
iLog.Genius said:
That's fine. I'm not going to say it's impossible that Apple will never do it out of satisfaction, you probably had a reason or whatever and Apple was willing to make you or keep you a happy customer. But battery replacement is not something Apple does because you have AppleCare on a daily basis. The way the OP worded his post made it seemed that Apple will give you a new battery because you've used up the first one.
Click to expand...

mmmm.

well.

i'll still try.

They've been cool recently. Can't hurt either way.
 
Absolutely untrue. Batteries are consumable, once they fail to hold a charge, that's it you have to go buy a new one. The only time Apple gives out batteries is if you have AppleCare and the battery is faulty or you're just outside of your warranty and you have a faulty battery. If you know someone who did get one, that was done out of satisfaction for whatever reason but having AppleCare has nothing to do with it.
Click to expand...
Whoa, I did not know that. I checked it on Apple's support pages and it's true, but they don't seem to parade it around too much, which worries me, to be honest.

If I buy a laptop, I want to use it. The warranty is there to keep me calm - I know that if I don't misuse my laptop, whatever happens to it will be fixed. They should definitely tell you that if you use your battery before your warranty expires, they won't replace it. That would be one of the first things I think they should point out when they're selling me AppleCare :(.
 
mine's had maybe 900 cycles, and the battery literally would last 20 minutes after being charged all night. i got mine at the same time as you, december 06, macbook pro. its quite annoying, as it is no longer portable so to speak
 
The battery on my first MBP died and was replaced with no questions asked (via phone call). Actually, I didn't realise at first that the batteries weren't covered under AppleCare, but it does make a certain amount of sense to treat them as a user-cost consumable.

It's probably a fairly subjective judgement to consider battery cycles over time, and what could be could be called a prematurely failing battery. Unless there is a published ( charge hold + cycles + age ) formula.
 
Matek said:
Whoa, I did not know that. I checked it on Apple's support pages and it's true, but they don't seem to parade it around too much, which worries me, to be honest.

If I buy a laptop, I want to use it. The warranty is there to keep me calm - I know that if I don't misuse my laptop, whatever happens to it will be fixed. They should definitely tell you that if you use your battery before your warranty expires, they won't replace it. That would be one of the first things I think they should point out when they're selling me AppleCare :(.
Click to expand...

This isn't just an Apple thing. The other manufacturers do EXACTLY the same thing. Car manufacturers do it also.

I don't know why people expect otherwise.
 
I thought the whole battery and iPod deal when it first came out would clarify that batteries are something that dies over time and isn't expected to last forever. I'm reading 700 cycles and 900 cycles and it looks like the user is angry that their battery is lasting only 20 minutes?
 
iLog.Genius said:
I thought the whole battery and iPod deal when it first came out would clarify that batteries are something that dies over time and isn't expected to last forever. I'm reading 700 cycles and 900 cycles and it looks like the user is angry that their battery is lasting only 20 minutes?
Click to expand...

Not quite:

HappyDude20 said:
I've had my Macbook since December of 2006 and have to admit that with over 744 charge cycles later the battery is doing better than i expected.

With full brightness on and just surfing the web, the battery will last a good 2 hours or more, depending on what i'm doing. If it's just videos, like Hulu then the battery will last less than an hour.

...snip...
Click to expand...

Looks like he's fine to me, but just maybe wanted a new battery because his Applecare may be about to expire this year. :)
 
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