Keyboard Replacement Program - What to Expect?

[mcaswell]

I have a 2018 MBP 13" TB, and I'm one of the few people who actually likes the butterfly keyboard. Well, aside from the fact that my "n" key has started repeating occasionally, and another key (can't remember which one) has gotten partially stuck a few times (still functioned, but didn't feel right... both of these instances resolved on their own after a while).

I installed Unshaky, which is helping considerably, but even with that app I still get repeated n's sometimes (maybe need to tweak the delay setting more).

Anyway, I've resigned myself to the fact that, once this coronavirus thing is over, if civilization still exists, I'm going to bring it in for the keyboard replacement. Problem is, it doesn't always do it. In fact, so far in typing this entire post, it hasn't happened once. But other times, it happens frequently. What I'm dreading is the prospect of driving an hour away to the Apple store, and having the tech tap on the n key a dozen or so times, and pronounce "seems like it's working fine to me", sending me home without the situation resolved.

I guess what I'm asking is, do they typically take the customer's word for something like this, or do I have to physically demonstrate the problem in real-time right then and there in order to get the keyboard replaced?

 

[gymratjudy]

What I did was take a few screenshots when it happen. The genius just took a quick glance at my pics, which he did not ask for, and did some sort of quick system check and that was it. Four days later, I had my laptop back with its new keyboard.

 

[Steve.P.JobsFan]

I think it depends on the store. I've seen some stores not insist on witnessing the fault because they're all going to fail eventually, but my local store made me type in TextEdit and show that I was getting double, triple, or quadruple (!) presses.

They can repair them now in-store instead of sending to the depot, which makes it much quicker. The turnaround time on my 2018 MBP being fixed a few months ago was less than 48 hours. The entire top case is replaced, which means you'll also have a new battery in addition to a "fixed" keyboard. (Of course, no fix is truly a "fix" unless you went to a machine without Butterfly keys...)

 

[Sully]

I've replaced 4 on two different machines. They just apologize and write it up. It's always come back within the week. You shouldn't have any issues at this point.

 

[titans1127]

I chose to do a chat and mail the device in vs going to the store and the person that assisted me didn’t run any remote diagnostics. Just asked me which keys are having issues(none were but my battery was shot and a keyboard replacement gets you a fresh battery) and set up overnighting a shipping box for me to send the machine in. Overall time from me starting the process to having the machine back and repaired was only 2 business days. Pretty sure the repair caused my display to suffer from flexgate but that I handled in store which was a same day repair despite being told 3-5 days for the repair to be sent out. I think with the keyboard program, they will be much more lenient with if the issue can be replicated or not.

 

[smirking]

If the problem comes and goes, I'd actually advise you to hold off on replacement. I had a 2016 that suffered from repeats until after a year. It never repeated again after the first year.

I have a 2018 MBP 15" now. The pattern was different this time. It was flawless for the first year that I owned it. A couple of months ago, I started getting some minor repeats. Each time it happened, I just gave each repeating key a bunch of firm taps and I held it down and wiggled it clockwise and counterclockwise.

This move seemed to stop the repeats, but they'd happen again and I'd do the same. After 2 months of intermittent repeats and me doing these "resetting" moves, the repeats have pretty much stopped again.

I think that the butterfly keys sometimes work better with some breaking in. In the past we had countless stories about people who said they were on their fourth or fifth replacement and each time they rushed back to get an exchange or get the keyboard replaced. I think some of these people would have been fine if they had just stuck it out.

 

[mcaswell]

Thanks all.

 

[mcaswell]

It's actually been working fine for the past several weeks!