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Paint peeling off MacBook Pro 15 keyboard

M

mvp2885

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 19, 2018
40
192
I paid almost $3,000 for my Mac and the paint on some of the keys are peeling off. I can see the white through the keyboard. Is this covered under warranty? My Mac warranty expires on July 29th, so it is still within that period. However, this is an eyesore. There are other keys that are starting to peel off. I've had Macs since 2008, and never, ever had this happen.

Has anyone experience this and did apple replace it for free? Attached you will see the pic. Thanks.
 

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I've never had it happen myself, but I've seen Mac laptop keyboards get pretty badly worn like this before. It is odd, though, especially since yours is (I assume) less than 3 years old if it's still under AppleCare.
 
I've never seen this before, nor have I heard of it.

But that sucks.

AppleCare is your friend.
 
Mine is doing this as well, 2 buttons so far. Pretty bummed since I keep my MBPs in perfect condition and this never happened with the old models:(
 
sorry but it is normal. for some.
at least for the last two macbook Air that i owned (each for over 4+years)
but one time, when i took my Air into a local apple retail store for a repair (not related to the key wearing down), the man who was helping me was very interested in that key-wearing.
the thing is, i don't have normally oily fingers. i think in fact it may have to do with the reverse: possibly excess soap or hand purifying soap residue, combined with my hand resting on that key and of course that is also the key that i (most people?) use to position the left hand as well.
so its likely that key is getting five or six times the contact as other keys.
I'm on my Air about 10 to 12 hours every day.
this has never bothered me.
and it only has happened (on both my Air) on the A key only.
 
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I’ve seen one or two Mac laptops with similar issue, but these were fairly old models. Maybe a rare manufacturing defect. It’s definitely not “normal”. I’d ping service about it.
 
I've heard a few reports of this on reddit. I have a 7-year-old 2012 rmbp 15" that I still use to this day and the keyboard is in flawless condition. I'm not a heavy typist or user that uses my mbp 12 hours a day. I fall into the average category.
 
mvp2885 said:
I paid almost $3,000 for my Mac and the paint on some of the keys are peeling off. I can see the white through the keyboard. Is this covered under warranty? My Mac warranty expires on July 29th, so it is still within that period. However, this is an eyesore. There are other keys that are starting to peel off. I've had Macs since 2008, and never, ever had this happen.

Has anyone experience this and did apple replace it for free? Attached you will see the pic. Thanks.
Click to expand...



Well, if your warranty expires in a week I would definitely go now to try to at least have them replace the keyboard. Keyboards themselves are cheap if you were to fix yourself but is expensive for techs to fix since there are so many screws. Go to apple though cause the keyboard wont feel the same replaced, cause rivets are holding it and making it so stable. If replaced by a computer store the rivets wont be there anymore cause they will just replace the 30-50 dollar keyboard itself. Hopefully this helps you.
 
Paint peeling off keys on a keyboard generally happens to folks who have a higher content of acid in their skin. My daughter is one of those people. She'll wear out a keyboard's symbols in no time. About the only thing you can do if your skin is that way is to wash your hands before using the keyboard. Not saying that's you.... it could also be a defect with your keyboard.
 
mvp2885 said:
I paid almost $3,000 for my Mac and the paint on some of the keys are peeling off. I can see the white through the keyboard. Is this covered under warranty? My Mac warranty expires on July 29th, so it is still within that period. However, this is an eyesore. There are other keys that are starting to peel off. I've had Macs since 2008, and never, ever had this happen.

Has anyone experience this and did apple replace it for free? Attached you will see the pic. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Here’s the scoop. You need to complain about the battery. They will replace the entire keyboard, touchpad, bottom case before ungluing the old battery.

Just got my MBP 2015 back, keys look and feel brand new.
 
I had the same thing happen on my iMac keyboard. This is another of Apples quality issues.
 
mvp2885 said:
I paid almost $3,000 for my Mac and the paint on some of the keys are peeling off. I can see the white through the keyboard. Is this covered under warranty? My Mac warranty expires on July 29th, so it is still within that period. However, this is an eyesore. There are other keys that are starting to peel off. I've had Macs since 2008, and never, ever had this happen.

Has anyone experience this and did apple replace it for free? Attached you will see the pic. Thanks.
Click to expand...
 
mvp2885 said:
I paid almost $3,000 for my Mac and the paint on some of the keys are peeling off. I can see the white through the keyboard. Is this covered under warranty? My Mac warranty expires on July 29th, so it is still within that period. However, this is an eyesore. There are other keys that are starting to peel off. I've had Macs since 2008, and never, ever had this happen.

Has anyone experience this and did apple replace it for free? Attached you will see the pic. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Both my wife and I have Macbooks - the small ones. They cost almost four times the cost of Windows machines and, for a year or so were brilliant. Now we both feel totally ripped off. The space bar on my wife's machine is intermittent which is absolutely infuriating for her.

I am a science fiction author and so I type a lot and my keyboard has lost the letters on the EIOADLNM keys and, recently my space bar and N key are occasionally not working. You only find out when you see all the red lines under sections of text.

Apple should be ashamed of themselves. I went to see the Mac dealer in Inverness (Scotland) and they said we were out of guarantee and new keyboards would cost about £700 each.

So, we are now in a quandary. Do we go back to Windows machines with all their drawbacks or do we use bluetooth keyboards.

Frankly, putting their customers in that situation is absolutely diabolical! Do you read this thread, Apple? Don't you feel ashamed? I was a very vocal advocate of your machines, now I'm embarrassed that friends might have switched to Macs on my advice and found this sort of problem.

Going back to Windows will be humiliating, but that seems the only option. When I do, I will write and talk extensively about the problem.

Do something, Apple, please!
 
Sorry to hear about the troubles with your MacBooks. Have you looked into the Apple Keyboard Repair Program? I don't know if your MacBooks qualify but it might be worthwhile looking into. Perhaps you can get the keyboards replaced for free. It's possible the dealer you went to see may not have been aware of the repair program.
 
Total nonsense about acidity on hands or anything. I have a brand new 2019 MacBook Pro purchased in August. I always wash my hands before using it and after 2(!) months the E key is completely peeled off. Only that one button, so it is obvious that there is some faulty paint or material in that button, I guess this is due to lack of quality control. The battery life is good, but it never reaches the advertised time though even though I am not using any resource heavy application just IDE's, browsing and text based stuff.
If anyone has an update on this please let me know.

Fortunately keys are working so far, just it looks like a 5 year old overused E key, which is very annoying. If anybody has suggestions please post.

Here is the image how the keyboard looks after two months and totally careful normal use:
[automerge]1574143057[/automerge]
I've just noticed after uploading the image the s an A buttons have similar issues to a lesser degree. Fantastic.
 

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Antal said:
Total nonsense about acidity on hands or anything. I have a brand new 2019 MacBook Pro purchased in August. I always wash my hands before using it and after 2(!) months the E key is completely peeled off. Only that one button, so it is obvious that there is some faulty paint or material in that button, I guess this is due to lack of quality control. The battery life is good, but it never reaches the advertised time though even though I am not using any resource heavy application just IDE's, browsing and text based stuff.
If anyone has an update on this please let me know.

Fortunately keys are working so far, just it looks like a 5 year old overused E key, which is very annoying. If anybody has suggestions please post.

Here is the image how the keyboard looks after two months and totally careful normal use:
[automerge]1574143057[/automerge]
I've just noticed after uploading the image the s an A buttons have similar issues to a lesser degree. Fantastic.
Click to expand...

Man, that sucks. Take it to Apple for warranty coverage, the earlier the better. I have seen this over the years, but not as quick as yours. Just be nice to the genius and get it fixed.
 
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I had this problem on my 2014 MBP before I sold it and its happening again on my 2018 one.

With the 2014 machine I was getting the screen changed under warranty due to stain gate with a third party authorised Apple repair place and they simply replaced some of the key caps (against policy I believe!).

I just interpret it as a consequence of typing alot - its always on the most used keys first. It used to bother me but now I dont' care except that its not good for resale value.

My 2018 machine:
 

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Had this exact problem with my Vega 20 MBP from late 2018. And I have had between 7-9 Mac laptops before that and I have NEVER seen this problem before. 3-4 keys was affected, after only 4-5 months. Got it covered via Apple's Keyboard repair program. They replaced the entire topcase to a 2019/gen 4. version. So new keyboard, battery, top, trackpad, the works. Took 3 days. It simply bad QC, nothing else. Take it back to Apple, I think they'll repair it, no questions asked.
 
Heatboy said:
Had this exact problem with my Vega 20 MBP from late 2018. And I have had between 7-9 Mac laptops before that and I have NEVER seen this problem before. 3-4 keys was affected, after only 4-5 months. Got it covered via Apple's Keyboard repair program. They replaced the entire topcase to a 2019/gen 4. version. So new keyboard, battery, top, trackpad, the works. Took 3 days. It simply bad QC, nothing else. Take it back to Apple, I think they'll repair it, no questions asked.
Click to expand...

May do all right. I'm planning to buy a 16" and sell this one so it can't hurt the resale
 
Lobwedgephil said:
Man, that sucks. Take it to Apple for warranty coverage, the earlier the better. I have seen this over the years, but not as quick as yours. Just be nice to the genius and get it fixed.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I will definitely try to do that but I'll only have a chance to do so after about 2 months because I am using this Macbook for work on a daily basis and I would need to leave it there for some time. I really wonder what they will tell me, I'll post it here after I went. By the way there are some screen flickers as well, but I can live with that. There are occasional horizontal flashes sometimes. But anyway, I hope the keyboard can get fixed without them breaking any other stuff.
 
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