How does AppleCare really work? (debatable)

[dkeninitz]

That's completely untrue. They will offer you AppleCare, and sometimes the representatives are a bit pushy. But in my experience all you need to do is tell them it's a hardware issue and you are under warranty (they are required by law to do this).

The $50 charge was for your phone support. They had to "diagnose" your problem, I'm guessing. This strikes me as miscommunication, not extortion... or maybe it was an isolated incident.

They did not "offer me AppleCare". The rep simply stated upfront that since I didn't have it I would have to give him a credit card number so he could charge $49 to "diagnose" my smoking AC adapter. He said Apple would decide later if it qualified as a warranty issue and would remove the charge if it did. After three calls I eventually got transferred to their safety/loss department (or something like that), at which point they agreed to replace the adapter and remove the charge. Oh, and I had to submit to a 15-minute interview so they could make sure they weren't going to have any liability in case my PB caught fire as a result of their initial resistance to replace the adapter. How would you know if something was "completely untrue", since you weren't involved?

 

[MacTruck]

I think this situation is hypothetical.

What exactly is hypothetical?

 

[Mechcozmo]

I have some odd warping on my PowerBook. 2 hours of being polite and showing evidence of the warping worsening, I had a replacement PowerBook bottom case on the way. (well, technically they had my PowerBook on its way, but whatever)

If you are nice, and explain the issue, then they will probably agree that dents/scratches are normal. But a 1 foot drop that leaves a nasty dent while the PowerBook was on, with hard drive possibly spinning, and 2 weeks later you call and they say, "Sorry, but that's too much of a coincidence" and I'd have to agree with them.

 

[maxterpiece]

I had one of those old ibooks with the logic board failure issues. The logic board failed, but several months earlier I had tripped over the ethernet cable plugged into the ibook and cracked the ethernet port to the point that it was worthless. Instead of bothering to try and get apple to repair it (I figured I had no shot), I just bought an airport card and a wireless router (probably cost me about $200 at the time).

So it turns out that the ethernet port is attached to the logicboard... something I had no idea of, so when I send in the laptop to apple they start talking smack about how i screwed up my ethernet port. I told them that the computer had been operating fine for several months after I did that damage. He put me on hold for about 15 minutes then came back and said they'd do the repair.

I think that was right around the time when the press got ahold of the logic board problem and just before apple came out with the "logic board replacement program". The rep seemed pretty anxious about the whole situation - like he knew that the problem wasn't my fault because he'd seen so many other logicboard failures in ibooks.

Anyway, that's my one damaged-computer-sent-to-applecare experience. I never used ethernet cords again BTW.