Buying off Craigslist...

[zhensley]

I found a computer on Craigslist that I am interested in buying. Basically, it is a guy who thought he wanted to go Apple, and decided he wants to go back to Dell. Don't lecture me on the danger of buying from Craigslist, my question is this:

He bought it on 3-25-08 from Best Buy and bought the one-year extended accidental warranty. If (when) I buy it, what do I need to do to ensure that I can still buy AppleCare for it? I don't want to get this and then not be able to add AppleCare in the next few months.

Thanks for your help

 

[tekmoe]

I found a computer on Craigslist that I am interested in buying. Basically, it is a guy who thought he wanted to go Apple, and decided he wants to go back to Dell. Don't lecture me on the danger of buying from Craigslist, my question is this:

He bought it on 3-25-08 from Best Buy and bought the one-year extended accidental warranty. If (when) I buy it, what do I need to do to ensure that I can still buy AppleCare for it? I don't want to get this and then not be able to add AppleCare in the next few months.

Thanks for your help

Ask him for the serial number and look up the warranty expiration date on support.apple.com. If it shows it still has the original Applecare Warranty until the March '09 timeframe, you should not have any problems buying the extended Applecare Warranty.

 

[rdowns]

Get the serial number and enter it here to make sure it is still eligible for AC.

https://selfsolve.apple.com/GetWarranty.do

 

[six.four]

I found a computer on Craigslist that I am interested in buying. Basically, it is a guy who thought he wanted to go Apple, and decided he wants to go back to Dell. Don't lecture me on the danger of buying from Craigslist, my question is this:

He bought it on 3-25-08 from Best Buy and bought the one-year extended accidental warranty. If (when) I buy it, what do I need to do to ensure that I can still buy AppleCare for it? I don't want to get this and then not be able to add AppleCare in the next few months.

Thanks for your help

just ask for the serial number ahead of time and check check to make sure that it was indeed purchased less than a year ago.

 

[zhensley]

Great. I will do that now.

Thanks

 

[convergent]

I can't resist sharing a good story of buying my first Mac on craigslist. Earlier this year I wanted to test the water of moving to a Mac after decades of running Windows. By the way, Dell's bad business tactics really helped me decide to try the other side!

I found a good PowerMac Dual G5 and exchanged emails and phone calls with the owner and ended up buying it for $1000. I went to his place and checked it out and all looked good. Then when I got home, for some reason the fans constantly sounded like a plane taking off. I was so upset. I contacted him and he basically said, "not his problem", and that he had never seen this problem before. Me being new to Apple, I just hit Google and found that this was most likely a bad logic board... which for a PowerMac G5 is a LOT of coin to fix. I was very bummed and ended up finding a local Apple authorized service provider that would check it out for $55. I dropped it off and they called the next day and said that it just needed a logic board calibration, and that it was complete and good to go. So I had a happy ending, and it was probably just the bumping around from moving it that caused the calibration to need a redo. Just be careful out there and check things out good. Verifying the serial number is a great way to go. I did just that when I bought some IBM laptops a couple of years ago for my business from Ebay. I called them up and they verified they were still under warranty, and I was good to go. Good luck with your purchase.