Is there a point to buying apple care before a year passes?

[tobygw]

So seeing as you're allowed to purchase apple care up to a year after you originally bought your computer, is there any benefit to purchasing it before the year is over? I don't really care too much about any of the workshops or phone technical support stuff, I'm more concerned about having a broken computer fixed for free and fast.

Is there any difference in how they treat you at the apple store if you go in there with your standard one year warranty vs having an apple care warranty?

 

[Baral]

For education pricing on Applecare you have to buy it at the time of purchasing your computer, so that's a big incentive. You can't apply the student discount if you opt to buy Applecare after the initial computer purchase.

Other than that and the additional phone support, no there's no other reason.

 

[tobygw]

For education pricing on Applecare you have to buy it at the time of purchasing your computer, so that's a big incentive. You can't apply the student discount if you opt to buy Applecare after the initial computer purchase.

Other than that and the additional phone support, no there's no other reason.

It doesn't even seem as though that is the case either, because I just went to the applecare page by itself while using the education store, and I could still get it at the discounted price even if it was the only thing in my cart.

 

[iLog.Genius]

For education pricing on Applecare you have to buy it at the time of purchasing your computer, so that's a big incentive. You can't apply the student discount if you opt to buy Applecare after the initial computer purchase.

Other than that and the additional phone support, no there's no other reason.

You can apply the student discount to AppleCare anytime after the initial purchase of any Mac.

 

[8CoreWhore]

No difference if you don't need phone support.

There would no difference in treatment between warranty and AC.

I'm waiting a year for my new purchase, then I'll buy AC on B&H Photo or Amazon, whichever is cheaper.

One slight advantage would be if you wanted the included TechTool software sooner....

 

[wordoflife]

You get phone support, which is great IMO. I hate driving to the Apple store

 

[VeNoMiZeD]

No phone support but you get Macrumors support

 

[tcador]

You get phone support, which is great IMO. I hate driving to the Apple store

Same here, plus i'm in a place that is over 2 hours away from the nearest store so the phone support is worth a lot.

 

[HBOC]

So seeing as you're allowed to purchase apple care up to a year after you originally bought your computer, is there any benefit to purchasing it before the year is over? I don't really care too much about any of the workshops or phone technical support stuff, I'm more concerned about having a broken computer fixed for free and fast.

Is there any difference in how they treat you at the apple store if you go in there with your standard one year warranty vs having an apple care warranty?

They treat you THE SAME!

 

[Miss Terri]

As others have mentioned, there is a difference with the phone support. The initial one-year warranty that comes with the computer includes just 90 days of phone support. If you buy Apple care right away (or, I suppose, within 89 days), you get continuous phone support. Conversely, if you wait until day 364 to buy Apple care, you miss the ~275 days of phone support (although you still get uninterrupted Apple Care for everything besides the phone support). That may or may not be important to you.

MT

 

[Proph3T]

squaretrade

I bought a squaretrade warranty for my MBP 2011 because they do drops and spills.

 

[marc11]

For education pricing on Applecare you have to buy it at the time of purchasing your computer, so that's a big incentive. You can't apply the student discount if you opt to buy Applecare after the initial computer purchase.

Not true, I purchased AppleCare on my son's MacBook two weeks ago, a week before his basic one year expired and used my education discount. Apple's site makes it a bit of a PITA to get it, but you can for sure get the discount.

 

[Baral]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Damn, can you really get the discount after the initial purchase? I was specifically told you couldn't.

I was duped by that employee. I should have double checked but what reason did I have not to believe him :/ Oh well, thanks for corrected info.

 

[barkomatic]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

Damn, can you really get the discount after the initial purchase? I was specifically told you couldn't.

I was duped by that employee. I should have double checked but what reason did I have not to believe him :/ Oh well, thanks for corrected info.

The Apple store employee I spoke with said the same thing. In order to get the discount on Applecare you need to buy the computer and Applecare at the same time.

I wonder if this is a very recent change? The last time I bought a mac I waited a year to get Applecare and I still got the education discount.

 

[Fgirl]

For me, the advantage to buying extended AppleCare at the point of initial purchase is so that 370 days later I don't get that feeling that I was supposed to buy something for that Mac I bought last year.

 

[marc11]

The Apple store employee I spoke with said the same thing. In order to get the discount on Applecare you need to buy the computer and Applecare at the same time.

I wonder if this is a very recent change? The last time I bought a mac I waited a year to get Applecare and I still got the education discount.

Maybe at the time Apple was offering a special discount on AppleCare if you purchased it with your computer, which wouldn't be available later?

 

[thom612]

You get phone support, which is great IMO. I hate driving to the Apple store

It's comments like these and threads like this that is stopping me from moving to a mac. People talk about macs breaking and taking them in to get them fixed as if it's completely routine. I've never had to take a computer in to get fixed. Do macs really have so many issues that you are routinely taking them into the Apple Store for maintenance or to get fixed?

Or is it really the case that 99.9% of macs make it through their useful life without an issue?

 

[kbright1892]

Or is it really the case that 99.9% of macs make it through their useful life without an issue?

You're on an internet tech forum. You're gonna hear more about the problems than the uneventful day to day use. Apple uses the same brands of components as other PC makers and often time the same models.

As for the OP, I'm waiting but I can see buying it upfront if you're worried that you might forget in a year.

 

[OneMike]

I say better to wait.

I seldom keep a computer more than a year. Better to decide if I'll stick with it before purchasing.

 

[kingtj]

Nah.... but

It's a complex piece of electronics, like anything else. You've got everything from people who accidentally delete important files and then wonder why it "stopped working", to people who just make mistakes and need help figuring out what they don't understand. (EG. One of my friend's girlfriends recently switched to a Mac, buying a Macbook 13". She quickly got frustrated that "she got some kind of virus on it" and it wouldn't pull up web sites properly anymore. We tried to tell her it was very UNLIKELY a virus, but she didn't believe us and stormed off to the Apple store to demand someone look at it. Turns out she had been playing around with the parental control features and locked herself out of web pages without realizing it!)

Since I started using Macs around 2000-2001, I've owned about 11 of them. (I currently have a Macbook Pro laptop, a Mac Mini for my kid, 2 older PowerMacs, and my girlfriend has an iMac 24" aluminum.) Both of my PowerMacs (one a 2006 model, so 5 years old now) have been running pretty much 24 hours a day, 7 days a week since I bought them and had absolutely no issues, other than an old ATI X1900XT video card that started overheating regularly. But by that time, I wanted to pull it out and upgrade it to a faster/better card anyway, so it was no big deal. My g/f and I have had zero problems with any of the iMacs we've owned, and my current MacBook Pro 15" is working perfectly so far (a 2010 model). The Mac Mini has been trouble-free too.

I did have a lot of problems with the first Macbook Pro 15" I bought, back when it was a brand new offering from Apple and I had to pre-order and wait weeks to get it in the mail. The one they shipped me was dead on arrival. They immediately agreed to exchange it, but had to wait another 2-3 weeks for its replacement, which sucked. About a year later, the bluetooth died in it. It was covered under the factory warranty though (never bought AppleCare on it), plus they replaced the hinges too at no charge, even though I didn't ask them to. They said "We discovered they were a little loose while working on it." So good service, at least.

It's comments like these and threads like this that is stopping me from moving to a mac. People talk about macs breaking and taking them in to get them fixed as if it's completely routine. I've never had to take a computer in to get fixed. Do macs really have so many issues that you are routinely taking them into the Apple Store for maintenance or to get fixed?

Or is it really the case that 99.9% of macs make it through their useful life without an issue?

 

[DarwinOSX]

They are under pressure to sell Applecare so I guess some of them don't mind lying in order to do it. The Edu prices on Applecare aren't anything special btw. You can get the same price at places like B&H Photo.

The Apple store employee I spoke with said the same thing. In order to get the discount on Applecare you need to buy the computer and Applecare at the same time.

I wonder if this is a very recent change? The last time I bought a mac I waited a year to get Applecare and I still got the education discount.

 

[thom612]

You're on an internet tech forum. You're gonna hear more about the problems than the uneventful day to day use. Apple uses the same brands of components as other PC makers and often time the same models.

Yes. Understood. But it's unusual to see an internet tech forum where everybody buys the extended warranty. There seems to be an attitude on this and other forums that it is inevitable that you will need to bring your mac in for service. People don't seem to talk about "if" you will need to bring your mac in, but "when". This worries me.

 

[aznguyen316]

The Apple store employee I spoke with said the same thing. In order to get the discount on Applecare you need to buy the computer and Applecare at the same time.

I just bought my 2011 MBP yesterday and here's what the specialist told me regarding the student AppleCare. That yes, I can purchase the discounted Applecare on my 15" ($110 discount! beats B&H IMO) after purchasing my MBP. I can just come in, speak to someone and probably just need to show my student ID and I can get it.

Is there any difference in how they treat you at the apple store if you go in there with your standard one year warranty vs having an apple care warranty?

Following up on purchasing AppleCare sooner or later, the specialist said that there IS a different level of "treatment". Not that they would treat you any worse, but that although it's not specifically written, if you have purchased AppleCare plan, you will be taken care of in regards to accidental spills or drops. But basically he said, if they (the genius bar/techs) see you already bought the full AppleCare, the Apple technicians will take care of you because you already went ahead and purchased the warranty plan. This is opposed to if you came in 6 months later under what he called "manufacturer's warranty" and something accidental happened, you probably would not be taken care of for being replaced on accidental coverage as opposed to someone that actually went ahead and bought AppleCare plan ahead of time.

This was his response as to why should I buy it sooner than later and he said those reasons listed above. He mentioned the store replacing cracked screens etc for people that bought AppleCare vs not doing so for people that did not already.

So I don't know! I do know, I really like my Tampa Apple Store and they've always been pretty straight shooters. Mind you, this was all information I got yesterday after purchasing my high-end system. He said he especially recommended I buy ASAP which confused me and thus he explained if I screwed something up myself, they'd take care of me rather than just using the manufacturer's one year warranty guidelines, which I would not be covered under accidental.

 

[xdbuix]

I just bought my 2011 MBP yesterday and here's what the specialist told me regarding the student AppleCare. That yes, I can purchase the discounted Applecare on my 15" ($110 discount! beats B&H IMO) after purchasing my MBP. I can just come in, speak to someone and probably just need to show my student ID and I can get it.



Following up on purchasing AppleCare sooner or later, the specialist said that there IS a different level of "treatment". Not that they would treat you any worse, but that although it's not specifically written, if you have purchased AppleCare plan, you will be taken care of in regards to accidental spills or drops. But basically he said, if they (the genius bar/techs) see you already bought the full AppleCare, the Apple technicians will take care of you because you already went ahead and purchased the warranty plan. This is opposed to if you came in 6 months later under what he called "manufacturer's warranty" and something accidental happened, you probably would not be taken care of for being replaced on accidental coverage as opposed to someone that actually went ahead and bought AppleCare plan ahead of time.

This was his response as to why should I buy it sooner than later and he said those reasons listed above. He mentioned the store replacing cracked screens etc for people that bought AppleCare vs not doing so for people that did not already.

So I don't know! I do know, I really like my Tampa Apple Store and they've always been pretty straight shooters. Mind you, this was all information I got yesterday after purchasing my high-end system. He said he especially recommended I buy ASAP which confused me and thus he explained if I screwed something up myself, they'd take care of me rather than just using the manufacturer's one year warranty guidelines, which I would not be covered under accidental.

How does the the apple store beat b&h? B&H is cheaper because of the tax on the applecare at the store. Also B&H comes with techtools.

 

[Seraphex]

Can you definatly buy apple care at the student rate after you've purchased a MBP?!

I just checked on the edu store UK and it was still full price.

I talked to my friend (an apple genius lol) and he said it wasn't allowed but it was defiantly worth a try. I guess it's not meant to be sold at a student price after the initial sale but some employees still allow it.