when apple care runs out.....

holystungun9

I am curious to hear good luck / bad luck stories about out of warranty failures. Is someone still bashing away with no problems years after or did someone have a too-expensive to repair failure soon out of warranty. What do you do when the warranty is out? Apart from hard drive swaps what have you been able to get fixed? Did you buy other machines for parts? Is it best practice to sell it on once out of warranty?Lots of questions I know. I am considering buying a secondhand notebook (2 - 3 years old as a second machine ),but concerned that I may hand over a chunk of cash and soon after have an expensive problem on my hands, proving it a false economy. Replies from time served mac users much appreciated.

conor.hogan.2

Two laptops, besides tea spilled on the first one which is hardly anyones fault but the person who did it, they are both still going perfect.
The first is nearly 3 years old and the current one is only 4 months old and fine.

Neither have AppleCare.

Liameter

I always buy second-hand so never had AppleCare. Currently using an 11 year old G4 "Quicksilver" tower (upgraded to 1.8GHz) and a 2009 2 GHz MacBook. If either fails, it owes me nothing! Never felt the need to have "the latest technology".

conor.hogan.2

Well a 2ghz macbook is plenty fast, just has a bad case.

holystungun9

Was just looking at those Data Doublers by OWC, where you whip out the optical drive and add a second hard drive. Seem great but then that's your warranty shot. Some guy in a forum said if you had some issue and needed to use applecare,then replace the superdrive, say nothing and get it repaired under warranty. Bit sneaky but I never use the superdrive, my music is from itunes and I don't bother with dvds. Making me think up that upgrade!

holystungun9

glad you guys have had no major issues, hope the rest of us get off the hook too.

PeakOutput

I didnt take out apple care on my white macbook 4 years ago. this time last year the harddrive failed and apple replaced it free in 5 days with one that had 40gb increased capacity

it was a known issue with my particular harddrive which is why it didnt matter that it was out of warranty but i still thought that service was excellent

whoopdedoo

I've used this, apple and the rest can stick their aftercare dippers!!


http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/article.html?in_article_id=487304&in_page_id=5

Sad Professor

^ Unfortunately the "2 year" part of that EU directive was never translated into Irish law. Technically the Irish Sale of Goods Act gives us just as much protection if not more, but it's ambiguous abut the time frame. As a result, you'll rarely get anywhere in this country without a lot of haggling or an application to the small claims court. But afaik sellers rarely dispute the claim and just pay up once they receive it as it's not worth their while going to court or whatever.

The main thing is that you make sure you are familiar with Irish law when dealing with them. Telling them about some EU directive which only partially applies here probably won't get you anywhere in most cases. You also have to remember that the manufacturer has no obligation to you under the law, it's the seller/retailer you bought the product from. This is important when you are dealing with the Apple Store as you don't want to be wasting your time telling this to someone on the tech support line, you need to talk to customer service. You also need to be very clear that the problem is a fault and not that you don't know how to use the product.

But, yeah, consumer protections are good enough that you don't really need extended warranties (which are a huge source of profit to manufacturers). The main benefit of AppleCare is the free telephone support and the no hassle repairs/replacements.

whiterebel

whoopdedoo wrote: »

I've used this, apple and the rest can stick their aftercare dippers!!


http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/article.html?in_article_id=487304&in_page_id=5

Fair play, using something that was never implemented in this country I presume it wasn't with Apple, as they send all conversations regarding the SoGA through their solicitors, I believe.

Bigcheeze

Just bought a macbookpro and didn't take Apple Care despite the hard sell. My view on insurance is that it's always bad value and I only insure the three things I can't afford to replace: My car, my house , my life.

Sad Professor

Bigcheeze wrote: »

Just bought a macbookpro and didn't take Apple Care despite the hard sell. My view on insurance is that it's always bad value and I only insure the three things I can't afford to replace: My car, my house , my life.

It should be emphasised though that AppleCare is not insurance, it's just an extended warranty. It doesn't cover loss, damage, theft, etc.

Bigcheeze

Sad Professor wrote: »

It should be emphasised though that AppleCare is not insurance, it's just an extended warranty. It doesn't cover loss, damage, theft, etc.

Apple store person seemed to suggest it was an enhanced rather than just an extended warranty. I asked what the standard warranty was and he said it was 12 months but very limited.

Sad Professor

Bigcheeze wrote: »

Apple store person seemed to suggest it was an enhanced rather than just an extended warranty. I asked what the standard warranty was and he said it was 12 months but very limited.

There's nothing enhanced about AppleCare except that you get 3 years of free telephone support instead of 3 months with the standard warranty. It's definitely not insurance. But like I said, the profit margin on extended warranties is huge, so they'll say anything to try and get you to buy it.

holystungun9

is there anyway of finding out what "known" problem there is with any given run of macs? PeakOutput said that got a hd replaced out of normal warranty because of a known problem with the drive. I think I would feel happier not getting applecare if I had good information on how the batch I bought from was performing. Can you pop your serial number is somewhere and it comes up with: your mac has been identified as having been fitted with faulty RAM.... or something like that. I suppose I am mainly concerned with anything that would cost me a ton of money if it failed outside of the one year stated warranty. HD, RAM, I'm not worried about, but i have heard about the price of a logic board for example, maybe cheaper to just scrap the machine! that's not something you want to happen. Can you go back and argue that 18 months (for example) is an unacceptable life span for the logic board for a mac under normal use?

Sad Professor

It takes a while for "known" problems with a particular model to become known, by which time the deadline for buying AppleCare has probably come and gone. If it's a serious issue with a lot of machines then they are likely to cover it outside of warranty anyway. Failed RAM and hard disks are nothing, they are both cheaply and easily replaced. If the logic board fails within 2-3 years and you have no AppleCare, then you have the Sales of Goods Act to fall back on.

Gregor Samsa

Been using Apple stuff for almost 20 years. In that time, I've had 8 different Macs (not to mention a ton of other peripherals, and equipment). I've never bought AppleCare, and the only time I've had to avail of a warranty repair was with a CRT Studio Display that lost its green output. I had one hard disk failure in my 12" PowerBook a few years ago - it was out of warranty, and I saw it coming, so I had everything well backed up, and the disk happened to fail the same day the upgrade I ordered arrived.

I still have 5 of those Macs in my possession that run fine, the oldest of those being a B&W G3 from 1999 (although the batteries in my old iBook and PowerBook are pretty much shot now), and a MacBook was stolen 2 years ago.

Extended warranties like AppleCare are more advantageous to the people selling them than the people buying them, IMHO.

CowboyTed

I had Applecare on my last Macbook Pro.

I brought it in for a few maintenance issues (the case was warped and it started getting grey screens) last January into the Geneva Shop. There was one month left on the warranty.

They made a mess of it... Totaled the hard drive, probably corrupted the motherboard. They replaced the case, hard drive... I will say I was pretty pissed at the time.

But in fairness Apple(after I got on to Cork) provided me with a new laptop, reinstalled my environment from time machine. I would say that I will be buying it again. I will be bringing no where near the Geneva shop and rely on Galmac in Galway for any fixes.

So I would say if your using it to make a living it is a good buy... By the way the new one is pretty good..

preilly79

Sad Professor wrote: »

^ Unfortunately the "2 year" part of that EU directive was never translated into Irish law. Technically the Irish Sale of Goods Act gives us just as much protection if not more, but it's ambiguous abut the time frame. As a result, you'll rarely get anywhere in this country without a lot of haggling or an application to the small claims court. But afaik sellers rarely dispute the claim and just pay up once they receive it as it's not worth their while going to court or whatever.

To follow on from what Sad_Professor has already said; I had a problem with the screen of my 24" iMac (a couple of years ago), which was no longer covered by AppleCare. The Apple techsupport agent didn't want to help me replace the screen but I simply stated my consumer rights and after a few minutes on hold a replacement was arranged. I didn't have to fight for it or threaten legal action through the small claims court.

How easy or not they will perform out-of-warranty repairs I guess depends on who you talk to, but the point is that your consumer rights can be enforced so don't be afraid to push them for a fix!