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Can it be saved?

T

TuiSong

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 28, 2011
147
0
Petone, New Zealand
Several months ago my iPad 1 suffered a fall, which ended my use of it. I saved up and replaced it with an iPad 2 and have been happy with the new toy. however my hubby now needs to have an iPad for work and I'm not willing to fork out yet another 1k for a 3g iPad when we already have one. I remembered I still have the iPad 1 hanging around and now I am wondering if it could be repaired.

After it fell the display was all crazy, it's not cracked in any way, but the case was bent and the display layers are a bit skew wiff and all rainbowy. I'm guessing all the innards are fine. I didn't even think at the time to contact apple because it was an accident at our end and not any fault with the hardware, but I realise I should have since it was still under warranty when it happened. no idea how to include pics on this forum, but heres a photo on my flickr account, http://www.flickr.com/photos/20909822@N04/6225021797/in/photostream

I just discounted the idea of getting it fixed because in most cases with small electronics the cost to fix far exceeds the cost to replace. I've even been scouting my local auction sites for ipad1 that aren't working due to other reasons to see if I can frankenstein one together. There is just nothing around in NZ, it's such a small market anyway and when broken ones do come up, its because they have been dropped and have broken screens and cases

I went to the apple site to see if I could find out if they could fix it, but all I got was that it would cost me $49 to talk to someone about it because I no longer had warranty cover?? all I want to know is roughly how much it might cost to get it repaired to see if it is worth doing. Or even if it is possible. I do feel like a mug for not contacting them while it was still under warranty, after hearing so many stories about how people have taken their abused and out of cover items in to apple stores and received replacements.
 
Sorry you lost me at "not willing to fork out another 1k". If your husband needs it for work I hope he has some say.
 
gtmac said:
Sorry you lost me at "not willing to fork out another 1k". If your husband needs it for work I hope he has some say.
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I'm really not sure why that lost you?

Usually when people start a reply with "sorry you lost me at" it's meant in a passive aggressive way, as in 'I was going to bother to read your post and actually help you, but I decided I didn't like the way you said something so instead of offering something constructive I'm just going to post "sorry but you lost me at"...'

I'm hoping you meant it as in you got confused about why we would have to pay for another iPad if he needed one for work? In which case my answer is we're not made of money, we have 1 iPad and it is needed in two seperate places by two different people. If we can fix the broken iPad up without having to take out a loan, then that would solve a problem
 
Its not worth getting fixed. You would need to replace the screen, and casing which would be around $300USD. You could just sell your broken one for ~$150 and put that towards a new one or maybe buy a used 3G 1st gen.
 
MallCop said:
Its not worth getting fixed. You would need to replace the screen, and casing which would be around $300USD. You could just sell your broken one for ~$150 and put that towards a new one or maybe buy a used 3G 1st gen.
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If we were using the vocabulary of cars, one would say that your iPad is totaled, and you should sell it for parts.

If it were the last iPad 1 on earth, some collector would restore the machine to its pristine glory. Unless there is some overriding sentimental value, there's no reason for you to restore it.
 
TuiSong said:
I remembered I still have the iPad 1 hanging around and now I am wondering if it could be repaired.
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I'd go to the web Apple Store and check out refurbished iPads. For example, an iPad 1 32 GB with 3G is available for NZ$ 789. That is like new with a year warranty, not broken + repaired + you have no idea how long it will last.

(Now in hindsight you could have checked if your home insurance pays for it; and if you have an Apple Store nearby it would have been a good idea to check what they can do. They have quite a bit of flexibility, and they can "repair" about anything by replacing it with a refurbished item at cost. )
 
Apple doesn't repair iPads, they just replace them at a discounted price.

A simular situation happened to a friend of mine. She dropped her iPad 1 and cracked the screen. She really missed it. Her husband felt so bad for her he went out and bought an iPad2 for her right away. A few months later someone told her that Apple will replace a damaged iPad for a fixed price, somewhere around $300. She wanted to fix it to give to her granddaughter. So she decided to take it into the Apple store to ask them to repair/replace it. They said it was her lucky day and they gave her a brown box iPad 1 at no charge. Her iPad was only 2 months out of warranty.

Things might be different in NZ or at different stores. Maybe try calling Apple rather than going to a store.
 
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Responding to a few posts here

Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store and bring it in. You may be surprised at what they can do.
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We don't have -any- apple stores in New Zealand. It is frustrating because I am always hearing about the amazing above and beyond service that people get when they take their out of warranty completely own fault broken items and apple replaces them with a cheery smile. It's lovely for the people who have this kind of thing available. for us in NZ we're still stuck with forking out the extra dollars to pay for apple care and even then we're not completely guaranteed that we'll actually get much joy.

The problem is that no apple stores means all the shops that do sell their products are just authorized resellers, they have their own agenda and profit margins to watch and can't just go handing out freebie replacements. Any apple online purchases come to us from Sydney.

Its not worth getting fixed. You would need to replace the screen, and casing which would be around $300USD. You could just sell your broken one for ~$150 and put that towards a new one or maybe buy a used 3G 1st gen.
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If it's not worth fixing a broken iPad then how is it that a broken one would have a value?

I'd go to the web Apple Store and check out refurbished iPads. For example, an iPad 1 32 GB with 3G is available for NZ$ 789. That is like new with a year warranty, not broken + repaired + you have no idea how long it will last.

(Now in hindsight you could have checked if your home insurance pays for it; and if you have an Apple Store nearby it would have been a good idea to check what they can do. They have quite a bit of flexibility, and they can "repair" about anything by replacing it with a refurbished item at cost. )
Click to expand...

Home insurance wouldn't cover the cost because our excess is $500 and then the increase in premiums for making a claim isn't worth it. All the insurance companies here in NZ are being extremely tight with payouts after the Christ Church earthquake has cost the country so much money.

We can't afford to drop 1k on a new ipad2, $800 on a refurbed ipad1 isn't in our reach either. We've just had to replace my iMac because the HD has been fading so much its unusable (at least I hope it is the HD, going to see about fitting a new one in when I can scrape up the money so we can have two functioning macs)

But I guess the general consensus is that they are not worth repairing and the parts to fix it are too expensive. And if I go to a genius bar I might find a solution, I wonder where the closest one is? do they have them in Australia?

I'll try ringing apple via the support number listed on the website, I was just put off going that route when I tried to find out how I could contact them to ask about a repair and the website was trying to make me book a one off consultation thing for $49 because I was out of warranty
 
Several months ago my iPad 1 suffered a fall, which ended my use of it. I saved up and replaced it with an iPad 2 and have been happy with the new toy. however my hubby now needs to have an iPad for work and I'm not willing to fork out yet another 1k for a 3g iPad when we already have one. I remembered I still have the iPad 1 hanging around and now I am wondering if it could be repaired.
Click to expand...

So when you drop your iPad, it's OK to pay for another one, but when your husband needs one for work, that's an extravagant expense? Sounds like you need to sort out your priorities.

More to the point, what kind of workplace requires an employee to have a $500+ device, and requires them to pay for it themselves? (I'm excluding cars here...)
 
TuiSong said:
Several months ago my iPad 1 suffered a fall, which ended my use of it. I saved up and replaced it with an iPad 2 and have been happy with the new toy. however my hubby now needs to have an iPad for work and I'm not willing to fork out yet another 1k for a 3g iPad when we already have one.
Click to expand...

This is easy. You don't want to fork over the money for another iPad but your husband needs one for work. You have one. Give him yours. Problem solved and no more money spent.
 
Demosthenes X said:
So when you drop your iPad, it's OK to pay for another one, but when your husband needs one for work, that's an extravagant expense? Sounds like you need to sort out your priorities.

More to the point, what kind of workplace requires an employee to have a $500+ device, and requires them to pay for it themselves? (I'm excluding cars here...)
Click to expand...

You assume it was -me- dropping the iPad, I really didn't think the how or why was necessary to the question of can it be fixed. My son broke it, and he did contribute to the replacement. when I call it -my- iPad I really meant the sole iPad our household of five people all shared, the my part was used to refer to it belonging to me and not some random unknown other person. Again I didn't really think defining ownership down to the minute details was relevant.

It was OK to pay for another one because our household had need for it, I homeschool my youngest son due to his special needs, and there are many apps that are useful. At the time we replaced the iPad my hubby didn't need it for work, and it is not a case of its mine he can't have it, it's just a case of within our family we now have a need for two iPads, where before we only needed the one.

Maybe in a high paying IT field under a spectacularly cushy contract, tools like iPads could be covered as part of an employees tech allowance. Unfortunately my other half works in a field not normally related to gadgets.

After having watched him lug in a huge pile of maps from his work van, and covering our dining table with them while he was trying to locate the map that had the current water reticulation plans on it, I finally had enough and decided that if his workplace were all going to be morons and live in last century, that it don't mean that the OH had to as well. So under our own steam, and on our own time we've set about getting hold of the plans in PDF form, I've been working editing them and creating pdf documents that link together and that he can push any point on the master index plan and be linked straight to the relevant plan.

He's been taking our iPad in to work every day and is finally starting to get some of the people in management to notice and see what it can do, they are interested in the new technology and as a result of all our work they've decided to order some xoom tablets.. ARGH! xoom, really? and .. the OH isn't going to get one because they don't actually want the guys who are out on the road actually doing the work to have the technology because they might break it.

So it comes back to they think it is a really great idea to have all the maps and other stuff on a portable device, but they only think it is a good idea for the people who already have access to computers in their offices to actually have them. This leaves my hubby with the same old bs of having to drive to the council to ask them to print out a copy of x map and then drive back to his job site. Now certainly he can do it, he can stick to his guns and keep on being inefficient and pointless, it's not like he's getting paid heaps to do anything else but that right?

But highly paid or not, he doesn't want to live his life being frustrated by the pointless bureaucracy that others are happy with. So he needs the iPad for work, it has all the plans that we spend many hours creating, it makes his life easier, even though his employers cannot acknowledge that. And it does it the way he wants it to, and in a way that he can understand and work it ( he's really not tech savvy)

So this leaves me with the problem of needing access to an iPad at home, for my son, and his needing it for work. and no I cannot afford to drop another 1k on another iPad, if we can get our first one fixed for half that price then that will do us for a home iPad while he keeps the iPad2 for work. It is an extravagant expense because we live on 40k a year, and we already spent 3k on replacing our five year old iMac.

Maybe if people weren't so quick to judge the why and just get on with responding to the what. All I wanted to know was if there was any chance we could get the ipad1 fixed, or any way I could have a crack at fixing it up myself

----------
AirForceOne said:
This is easy. You don't want to fork over the money for another iPad but your husband needs one for work. You have one. Give him yours. Problem solved and no more money spent.
Click to expand...

You know what? forget I came here asking for a bit of advice and help. this community is extremely judgmental and hostile towards new people. You have no idea of what my circumstances are, I didn't feel it necessary to write an epic novel because I honestly didn't think that any of it was relevant to my question which was CAN IT BE FIXED
 
First, iPads do not cost $1000. If all he needs it for is PDF maps, then a base-model will serve just fine. So we've already halved the cash outlay. If that's still too much, then look at refurb iPads or used iPads. Either is a substantial savings over the $1000 figure you're quoting.
 
Demosthenes X said:
First, iPads do not cost $1000. If all he needs it for is PDF maps, then a base-model will serve just fine. So we've already halved the cash outlay. If that's still too much, then look at refurb iPads or used iPads. Either is a substantial savings over the $1000 figure you're quoting.
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I live in NZ, the smallest 3G iPad being the 16g one costs $998 the wifi one is $799. There are two refurb ipad1 on offer at the apple store NZ those are both 3g and priced at $789 and $939 .

No a base wifi model is not enough for what he needs, the pdf maps is just one part of it. He also needs gps maps because he covers a huge area and often has to go work in unfamiliar places. He is given a roadmap book, but has to spend time pulled over search up street names in the index and cross referencing... yeah iPad makes life easier for him. Plus having access to emails while on the road has really streamlined his work process.

The wifi one is fine for our home use, and I'm happy to swap so he can take the 3G to work, but like I said, it is $799 for 16gb, and $949 for the 32gb one. some of the apps we have take up a fair bit of space so while the 16gb will work at home, the 32gb makes it all a bit easier

At the best we could spend $800, I just wanted to know if there was possibly any way we could get the ipad1 fixed, or fix it myself for less. I'd be willing to spend $300 - 400 because that is still half the cost of any other option we have. But it seems that repair wasn't an option, and sadly at this stage neither is buying a new one. My questions have been answered, the iPad isn't worth getting fixed/can't be fixed. So now at least I can dump it in the next e-waste collection day and start saving up again.

ETA: and just because I feel like someone else will think I am exaggerating re the prices and I'm just being overly drama llama < didn't mean for all that to sound so snarky, end of a long stressful day for me

http://store.apple.com/nz/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad/select?mco=MjE0OTI0MDA
http://store.apple.com/nz/browse/home/specialdeals/ipad?mco=OTY2ODY4Nw
 
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all this petty stuff back-n-forth is tiresome, let's cut to the chase here:

since you don't have an apple store in NZ, i'm going to say that it's extremely unlikely that you'll be lucky enough to get a gratis replacement. the remaining viable options are:

1) fork over the examination fee (something in the neighborhood of $50 wasn't it) and hope the repair estimate is something that you can afford.

2) sell the ipad (I don't get why you are so skeptical that a damaged ipad is not worth anything.)

3) buy an alternative tablet

if your husband's primary need for a tablet is for PDF access, surely there are other tablets that can do this at a cheaper price point. [edit] read your post about the gps function, might have to do some research on what the other tablets are capable of.

i think option 1 is the way to go. worst case is you're out the fee if the repair cost is too much. can you use your laptop instead of the ipad for schooling your kids which would free up the tablet for your husband? if your husband is the primary breadearner and the tablet would really help with his work, i think the ipad should go to him. when the ipad3 hits the market next year, you might be able to score an ipad1 at something you can afford.

ps. Demosthenes X, you're being an ******.
 
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bufffilm said:
2) sell the ipad (I don't get why you are so skeptical that a damaged ipad is not worth anything.)
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I've been looking at our local auction site on and off for a couple of weeks to see if any non functioning iPads came up because I was wondering if I might be able to fix mine by replacing the case, the screen isn't cracked or anything, I'm not sure if the screen not working right is because it's just bent at the moment. But the thing is, I haven't seen any broken iPads for sale. And even looking in the past auction history I haven't seen any being sold. Either there are none around, or there simply isn't a market for them in NZ. I've checked the ifixit tear down and I think I could give it a crack, can't lose anything can I. but the parts aren't forthcoming

I also had the same issue when my sons xbox broke, I tried to sell it as a project, but ended up splitting it out and selling all the bits and pieces off because no one wanted to buy a broken xbox. It was a pain to do and running so many auctions and having to realist bits.

I really don't think the market exists in NZ to even bother trying with the iPad. that is why I am skeptical that it is worth anything. Also my experience of selling on ebay has been that most buyers tend not to trust overseas sellers, but maybe I might be able to offload it there? if so what kind of money could I expect for 16gb iPad 1 with bent case and possibly dodgy screen? I have to account for shipping costs, but I would be thrilled if I could make some money back on it rather than simply recycling it.

1) fork over the examination fee (something in the neighborhood of $50 wasn't it) and hope the repair estimate is something that you can afford.
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oh the fee was just to speak with someone over the phone! when I went to apple nz and clicked support link it asked for my serial number, I typed it in and then it told me it that my service and repair coverage was expired ( I knew that) but I could purchase a 1 time phone consolation for $49. Of course I backed out of that rather quickly. It wasn't for a physical appraisal and estimate, just a phone consultation. Like I said, I think we miss out on a lot by having no apple store in the country. Even if there was one in another city that I could courier the iPad to it would help.

Hope that helps the understanding of the situation here, I'm trying hard not to come across as simply being as difficult as possible. I'm just getting the feeling that it's much easier to deal with apple in other places, and people aren't getting why it's hard for me
 
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I dropped my original iPad a few months after I bought it. Went to the apple store explained what happened and was given a new one without any hassle. It's always wroth a shot to give them a visit/call.
 
Tycoonguy said:
I dropped my original iPad a few months after I bought it. Went to the apple store explained what happened and was given a new one without any hassle. It's always wroth a shot to give them a visit/call.
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And what do you recommend for the OP, who lives in a country (NZ) that has no Apple Stores whatsoever?
 
don't stress over having to 'explain' yourself to posters who are acting like jerks, you don't owe them anything.

$50 for a mere phone consulation is ridiculous. do you know anyone who might be going to australia who can take it in to an apple store and argue your case [worst case get a repair estimate for you]?

still wouldn't rule out trying to sell it if it is your last resort though.


TuiSong said:
Hope that helps the understanding of the situation here, I'm trying hard not to come across as simply being as difficult as possible. I'm just getting the feeling that it's much easier to deal with apple in other places, and people aren't getting why it's hard for me
Click to expand...
 
Did you look at this page on Apple's website about out of warranty repairs?...
http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=New_Zealand&product=ipad

If you own an iPad that is ineligible for warranty service but is eligible for Out-of-Warranty (OOW) Service, Apple will replace your iPad with an iPad that is new or equivalent to new in both performance and reliability for the Out-of-Warranty Service fee listed below.
*
iPad Wi-Fi
iPad 2 Wi-Fi Out-of-Warranty Service Fee
16GB NZ$ 424
32GB NZ$ 504
64GB NZ$ 574
iPad Wi-Fi + 3G
iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G Out-of-Warranty Service Fee
16GB NZ$ 524
32GB NZ$ 604
64GB NZ$ 674
All fees are in New Zealand dollars and include GST and shipping. A NZ$ 25.00 shipping fee will be added if you arrange service online or by calling Apple Technical Support.

For example, an iPad that has failed due to damage is eligible for Out-of-Warranty service. However,*certain damage is ineligible for OOW service, including*liquid damage, catastrophic damage, such as the device separating into multiple pieces,*and inoperability caused by unauthorised modifications.

Apple reserves the right to determine whether or not your iPad is eligible for Out-of-Warranty service. Replacement iPads have a 90-day limited hardware warranty or assume the remainder of your standard warranty or AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad coverage, whichever is longer. Please see the AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad and Apple's Repair Terms and Conditions for further details.
 
macking104 said:
Did you look at this page on Apple's website about out of warranty repairs?...
Click to expand...

aha! how did you find that? I spent an hour or two searching around the apple site before giving up and coming here to ask if anyone had any idea if it was something that could be fixed. I wonder though if it would be eligible, mine was dropped which would be catastrophic damage? though it is still together in one piece. I'll try contacting them tomorrow during business hours. Was there a link to a phone number?

Its still half the cost of a new iPad, which is more workable
 
Demosthenes X said:
Those iPad prices are crazy. :/
Click to expand...

They are, but exchange rates and local sales taxes, plus import duties make them what they are. Unfortunately with the current exchange rate, plus shipping and duty to pay (Anything over $400NZ gets import duty slapped on it) those iPads work out dearer.

I did however find this among the iPad listings there. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-iPad...ccessories&hash=item5d2f67edfc#ht_1233wt_1165

Anyone have experience with that product? it would be half what i need anyway
 
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