k, there's too much to read through, so i'll put in my own experience with AppleCare and BestBuyService for the same product.
i purchased a ipod nano, approximately 2 or 3 years ago with a best buy service plan (PSP). During the first year, my ipod broke (it stopped playing sound), so i went to bestbuy to get my warranty. they said it's still the first year, so i'll have to deal with apple.
i went to the apple website, went to support put in my serial number and they prompted me that they would send me a box to mail the ipod to them. I recieved the box the next day, and shipped it the same day. within TWO days, i had my ipod back. fade to black
*fast forward in time*
ipod nano breaks again, this time, it has the sploch of black on it. I thought it was accidentaly damage from either sitting on it, or moving from inside my warm house to the negative ten degree outside, but i checked online and this was infact covered by apple. however, the one year applecare was over, and so i relied on my trusty bestbuy warrenty.
Walked over to my local best buystore, trucked over to customer service, told them it was broken. waited over 30 mins in line to have the person tell me that i had to walk myself over to "Geek Squad" to take care of it. so i walked over to "Geek Squad" where the dude told me it was not covered by warranty, where as i told him the apple site said it was a frequent problem that is covered. he kept saying no, until i showed him the site. at which point, he told me to go back to customer service (WTF!?!?) i got there, and they said i should go mail in the product myself, pay for the shipping fee and repair fee, go to the best buy website/phone service, and call the to get a cheque to get my money back, but only partially because of some stupid clause on the warranty.
at this point i'm annoyed and ask them, why can't they ship it? and they said, oh, we can't do that, you have to do that. i recieved this answer for about twenty mintues as i couldn't get an answer better than "you have to do that". it wasn't until i found the manager that he explained the following: best buy takes the ipod, holds it until the truck comes (once a week) to take the products to the head factory, held there for at least two weeks when the second truck comes, ships it to apple in the states, have apple spend a day processing it, then they have to send it back to the head office, then have the head office send it back to the store. so i'd have to wait at LEAST three months for it back. BULL-Sh!. i told them to ship it, cuz i already paid for that stuff, and it well. i got my ipod back in 6 months. Sold it and bought a new one from Apple Store.
that's just my experience in the situation, just incase anyone wanted to know a first hand account of bestbuy service, very very poor.
and i'm pretty sure best buy doesn't cover accidents, the only people that do that is Dell. if you're accident prone, purchase a Dell, since their warranty (i've heard from first hand accounts) is just as fast as apple, but covers even more (at a higher cost).
*end rant