Several weeks ago my wife told me her 2018 MBP 15” wouldn’t stay closed. Looking it over, not only was the lid not closing properly but the bottom had bellied out so much that only two feet could touch down at a time; clearly an attack of battery swelling. All the Apple stores in my state are closed for the duration, so I went online to support, where I got a case number and phone number. Called that, waited 25 minutes on hold (to Apple’s credit there’s a choice of three styles of hold music or silence—took the latter) and finally had phone answered by a very friendly woman who asked me to check the battery condition, which I did with Coconut Battery. When I told her it was in perfect health she assured me that the battery was fine and I had nothing to worry about. As for the deformed case, she suggested I take it to an authorized repair place. I called them—the tech told me it certainly was a bad battery, it would cost over $500 and to call Apple back, which I did.
The friendly guy who answered agreed that it was a swollen battery and put me on hold for about five minutes. When he came back on he apologized that there wasn’t any kind of program for out-of-warranty battery replacement and quoted a price of close to $700 for a repair. I called back the local place, who wouldn’t quote a price without looking over the computer for $70. I called Apple again. This time, the friendly guy who answered told me he was sure the previous guy I had spoken with was wrong, and found a program that covered the repair at no charge to us. He said I’d get a shipping box within two business days, later confirmed with an email.
Monday and Tuesday passed without a box, so on Wednesday I made a fourth call and another friendly guy told me the box had been delivered by UPS on Monday! Except it hadn’t—we had watched the UPS truck pass us by. He looked into it and told us that somehow another customer’s box shipment had gotten attached to our repair order. Received Fedex box on Friday, took it back to Fedex in late afternoon, just in time for Labor Day weekend. Apple’s repair place got it on Tuesday, had it back to us repaired and working properly on Thursday, a couple of days shy of two weeks after we first called them.
Moral: while everyone was friendly, not all were knowledgeable, so call more than once.