No No No. If you go to the independent Mac dealers you can buy a MBP-R with a 2 year warranty as standard right now. One department store here in the UK is even offering a FREE 3 year warranty on all MBP-R purchases at the moment.
And what else is that store selling that gets them more profit to off set the costs they might have to pay. If any since that free warranty might be them covering the costs of buying the Apple Care plan so they won't have to actually pay anything. There are resellers here that do that. When you bring it to them for service they tell you it will take a couple of weeks then they take it over to Apple and take the credit for them fixing it. All the while claiming they are an Apple authorized repair center.
And these offers are just on rMBP, you say they are flying off the sleeves but you have no numbers. Flying can mean 5 a week or 50. Who knows. But if the number is low enough then they aren't losing that much. More this is a loss leader trick to get bodies into the store to buy other things as well or be talked out of waiting for that rMBP to come back into stock.
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You would think Apple would want people to know their stuff is covered for 2 years. I'm seriously going to find out if AppleCare covers me for 2 more years, so 4 in total!
Depends on how the coverage works. If its like the EU laws and its on the seller then they don't want to be advertising it too strong or folks will assume that its the Apple limited warranty that doesn't care where you bought it.
And I highly doubt that this does jack to the length of Apple Care. Particularly if you bought it before any of this went down.
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What the article doesn't mention is how people were told the warranty was only 12 months when it really is 24 months, and they were sold extended warranty.
That's outright theft.
Its only theft if they are legally required to cover the same kind of service.
Before now, the two year period was a suggestion not a legal mandate. In fact it reads like it is still just a suggestion but Apple, without legal requirements to do so, has decided to take up that suggestion on their own.
Also, is the law requiring seller or manufacturer provided serviced. If it's seller than Apple's one year warranty isn't the same. Because it doesn't care where you bought it in terms of Apple Store, carrier store, Best Buy etc. as long as the source was a legit seller you are good. Same with Apple Care.
And is the law about any defect or only those at time of purchase. If the later, Apple's one year is not the same because it only cares about whether you caused the issue. If you did, you pay. If not, who cares when it broke, they fix it. Same with Apple Care. And many of these 'time of purchase' laws require you to prove it was such if you've had it more than 6 months or so. The idea being if you had it for over six months it couldn't have been that broken etc. Apple's one year and Apple Care have no such requirement.
Not to mention that with Apple Care you get free phone support for anything including user stupidity for the whole period. That right there can be worth the cost for many.
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Normally you should get in the European Union also 2 years of warranty because it's a European law.
No it isn't. it's 2 years of buyer protection for defects present at delivery from the seller. You didn't buy in the EU so you don't get that protection cause you don't have a seller to go to. You'd have to back to your seller in AU under applicable laws.
Which is basically moot of you are in the first year or have Apple Care cause neither cares when the 'defect' turned up or where you bought the item. As long as it wasn't user damage they will hook you up.
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You were always covered by the Australian Consumer Guarantees Act regardless of what Apple had on their website.
An act that suggested 2 years but didn't mandate it. So Apple was never acting against the laws. They weren't the issue, the folks that wrote the act and passed it without a clear time line for coverage periods were the issue