I bought a decent macbook for a reasonable price off ebay about a month ago for my little sister who's going off to college.
Since it had the extended applecare, I figured it was a pretty good deal and any issues could be cleared up easily.
How wrong I was.
The macbook had palmrest staining which I knew about from the pictures -- that was the main reason I wanted to send it to Apple and while it was there, we could just have it checked out.
Unfortunately, the macbook decided that it had some serious hardware issues and refused to stay on. Well, that sucks.. but not that huge an issue. Apple will take care of it.
However, we have to wait for Applecare to transfer. I contact the ebay seller who is very polite and quick with the transfer. My sister receives an Applecare certificate about a week later. Still, everytime the Apple Certified place tries to contact Apple about sending in the Macbook, Apple tells them it's not in the system.
After a month, my sister asks me to call apple and take care of it since she spent 40 minutes on the phone with them and got nowhere. After talking to two customer service techs, we realized whoever registered the Applecare had put in ONE digit of the Macbook serial number incorrectly. Thankfully the ebay seller had cc'd me on the transfer email he sent to Apple so I had all the info -- his name, the receipt number, the store it was purchased, etc.
It took about twenty minutes on hold while they straightened it out but hell, at least they fixed the problem and were all very polite and friendly about helping me out. I've spent a lot of time lately with various companys' customer service lines and Apple was one of the better ones, thankfully.
So here's some buying advice for you -- if your secondhand Mac comes with Applecare, make sure it's the actually registered under that Applecare!
Since it had the extended applecare, I figured it was a pretty good deal and any issues could be cleared up easily.
How wrong I was.
The macbook had palmrest staining which I knew about from the pictures -- that was the main reason I wanted to send it to Apple and while it was there, we could just have it checked out.
Unfortunately, the macbook decided that it had some serious hardware issues and refused to stay on. Well, that sucks.. but not that huge an issue. Apple will take care of it.
However, we have to wait for Applecare to transfer. I contact the ebay seller who is very polite and quick with the transfer. My sister receives an Applecare certificate about a week later. Still, everytime the Apple Certified place tries to contact Apple about sending in the Macbook, Apple tells them it's not in the system.
After a month, my sister asks me to call apple and take care of it since she spent 40 minutes on the phone with them and got nowhere. After talking to two customer service techs, we realized whoever registered the Applecare had put in ONE digit of the Macbook serial number incorrectly. Thankfully the ebay seller had cc'd me on the transfer email he sent to Apple so I had all the info -- his name, the receipt number, the store it was purchased, etc.
It took about twenty minutes on hold while they straightened it out but hell, at least they fixed the problem and were all very polite and friendly about helping me out. I've spent a lot of time lately with various companys' customer service lines and Apple was one of the better ones, thankfully.
So here's some buying advice for you -- if your secondhand Mac comes with Applecare, make sure it's the actually registered under that Applecare!
