Apple Care for Canadians with no Apple Store

[Woodcrest64]

Just wondering what kind of experiences Canadians have had using Apple care where there is no Apple Store near them.

I have taken my Retina Macbook Pro to London Drugs where they actually charged me under my warranty 40$ for looking at it. I also been to Boutique Mac in Nanaimo where they didn't charge me anything but told me to go to an Apple store for my display related issues 'Ghosting'

I was told by an Apple customer care rep that there is no Mail-in service for Macbooks or iMacs for Canadians.

I am left with a sour taste in my mouth as I was under the impression Apple had really good customer service.

I bought my retina Macbook Pro online through the Apple store. Maybe if I had bought it through a local reseller I would of gotten better service...

Anyways just wanting to see what other Canadians experiences are like regarding Apple care where there is no Apple store near them.

 

[derbothaus]

There were plenty of Apple support stores around before Apple got into Mall shops. They have since been forgotten unfortunately. Why work there when you can have an @apple.com email and a boss from Banana Republic?

 

[icowboys]

I had a very similar experience.

Last fall the Nvidia GPU of my rMBP failed. Whenever the dedicated GPU got triggered, artifacts would appear on the screen.

I called Apple Support and after all the typical troubleshooting steps failed, they started preparing the paperwork for Mail-in repair. All was going well until I gave him my postal code - that's when I was placed on hold. When he returned I was told that mail-in repair was not available in Canada.

I got the impression that Mail-in repair service is available only in Fedex serviced areas within Canada. Fedex hands off all deliveries to Purolator in my town.

This was very disappointing. One of my reasons for buying Apple products was for the support options.

To make a bad situation worse, the only Apple Service Provider within 30 minutes of my home still hadn't passed the rMBP "exam". He couldn't help. I had to take it to the Apple store in Halifax (2 hrs away) - leave it there for repair - and then pick it up a week later. No idea what I would have had to do if the Apple store wasn't there (it just opened last summer).

To add insult to injury, the keyboard backlight and left speaker didn't work when I got the rMBP home. Whoever replaced the logic board forgot to attach some ribbon cables. I ended up buying a pentalobe screwdriver off eBay and fixing it myself.

This has left a bad taste in my mouth as well.

 

[fskywalker]

You can buy the Apple Care from a few reputable sellers in EBay, which will proved an invoice and mail you the seal box. I recently bought them for my rMBP and my wife's MBA, no isssues whatsoever.