Okay guys, time for an update! Thanks a lot for the suggestions and support.
So, as you know, I was in contact with a support manager at Apple in Sweden. He was going to look into the issue and get back to me. He did e-mail me back after three days, informing me that Apple does not replace these drives, but one could order the drive and either replace it oneself or let a third party (like an Apple service partner) do it. So, out of three places I've been in contact with, I've received three different answers (drive cannot be replaced, drive can be replaced but only by authorized service partner, drive can be bought and replaced by the customer). Ugh...
Anyway, the service manager told me that I could use the European consumer law to try to get a replacement out of warranty. Now, here comes the tricky part. Outside of my engineering work, I run my own e-commerce business. I bought this MacBook on my own company, as that's mainly what I need it for. The law is a bit different for consumers and companies. As a consumer, you have a three year period where you are eligible for repairs as long as the issue can be seen as a manufacturing defect (statutory warranty). As a company customer you have
two years statutory warranty and
this two year period can be removed by stating so in the purchasing agreement between the companies. For consumers it's not possible to remove or change the statutory warranty.
As it turns out, Apple of course removes the statutory warranty for companies in their purchasing agreement, meaning the standard 1 year warranty is all there is.
Long story short, the Apple manager got back to me after a week (and a reminder). He apparently didn't know about the fact that Apple does not have the two year statutory warranty for companies. However, I started digging around on Apples site and finally found it in section 11.3 in Apple's company sales policy (
http://store.apple.com/se-business/open/salespolicies).
I informed the Apple manager and wrote a pretty long e-mail where I explained (again) how this MacBook had never worked correctly. I also questioned the customer-friendliness of combining the following:
- A one year warranty and no statutory warranty.
- Proprietary components.
- Extremely high prices on replacement parts, to the point of it being better to throw away the computer than to try to repair it with new OE parts.
- Using custom screws to attempt to prevent users from servicing their products themselves.
It's basically tailored for driving customers to buying as much new stuff as possible and to throw away the old instead of repairing it. Please note, I'm not saying that any one of the above items are wrong, but the combination is not something that strikes me as particularly "customer friendly".
Today, after another two reminders and an additional 11 days of waiting, I finally got the verdict:
Apple will not do anything about this. Not even provide a reduced repair cost on goodwill.
Bottom line:
I'm not bitter about all this, but maybe a bit angry at myself for not checking everything up (including repair prices) before purchasing from Apple.
Knowing what I know now, I just don't find it feasible to continue buying Apple products for my company. It's too much cost and hassle involved when something goes belly up. For consumers, with the 3 year statutory warranty, it's obviously a different situation. Apple doesn't care about a small customer like us (we've bought stuff for ~5000 USD the last three years, or so), but it's important for us to work with customer friendly suppliers.
As of now, a Dell Latitude E5450 (Broadwell i5, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 14" IPS 1080p) is on the way. It's bulky and ugly compared to the MacBook Air, but it's fully user serviceable. Also, even in this rather beefy configuration, with a nice 1080p IPS panel, it is 30% cheaper than a 13" 8GB 512GB MBA.
What happens to the MBA? Well, it goes into my drawer for now. Hopefully I'll be able to get a 256GB drive for a decent price down the line. If I get it up and running again, I'll probably just sell it off.
Thanks for reading.
