Applecare: Yes or No?

120_Minutes

So in August this year i bought my first mac, a 13" pro. I plan to keep it for about 3 years, when i can still get some cash for it on the second hand market and fund an upgrade. between now and then however, if anything happens to it, i cant afford to replace it.

I'm not sure if i should bother with applecare. I'm competent enough that if a battery or hard drive were to fail i could replace them myself (i already put 8gb of ram in, so i'm not afraid to open it up) so barring a complete motherboard fail i'm not sure if applecare is any benefit to me.

any advice for my situation?

Outkast_IRE

Shouldnt consumer law cover you for a product like this for a few years anyway in terms of hard drive or component failure, if its not your fault that it ?
I have never purchased extended warranties on electronics as i believe if push came to shove the small claims court etc would side with you if it genuinely wasnt your fault it failed.

120_Minutes

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

Shouldnt consumer law cover you for a product like this for a few years anyway in terms of hard drive or component failure, if its not your fault that it ?
I have never purchased extended warranties on electronics as i believe if push came to shove the small claims court etc would side with you if it genuinely wasnt your fault it failed.

Noted, but as we all know, apple are a law unto themselves, and as someone who works in retail i never want to be that guy that uses the words "rights" and "small claims court"

swingking

Your rights are NOT with the manufacturer. In fact they owe you nothing except the warranty.

Your rights are with the point of sale - so that could be Apple themselves but only if bought directly from Apple. Otherwise people who bought from bricks and mortar need to go back to where they originally bought it from

yer man!

I personally think it's far too much money for what it's worth. My macbook pro is now two years old so is completely out of any type of warranty. In the past two years i've had to replace the hard drive cable five times, €30 a pop, apple took care of any faults within the first year and would only entertain major faults for the second year (which thankfully I had none). Parts are really easy to come by, and are also really easy to fit yourself. Do Curry's do any sort of store warranty on apple products? I know a friend of mine bought a HP laptop and she said the service was very good and was really cheap and the time of sale.

pow wow

You can purchase Applecare any time within 12 months of purchasing the macbook pro so you don't have to decide right away if you don't want to. If by August 2013 your macbook turns out to be of the sickly variety you'll know if it's going to be a good investment or not.

I had it on my macbook and all the faults it developed were covered under recalls etc. so I never actually got any value out of the warranty itself. I did buy mine in the US when I was on holiday there though so it wasn't as expensive as it is here. If buying again I wouldn't bother with it tbh.

whiterebel

yer man! wrote: »

I personally think it's far too much money for what it's worth. My macbook pro is now two years old so is completely out of any type of warranty. In the past two years i've had to replace the hard drive cable five times, €30 a pop, apple took care of any faults within the first year and would only entertain major faults for the second year (which thankfully I had none). Parts are really easy to come by, and are also really easy to fit yourself. Do Curry's do any sort of store warranty on apple products? I know a friend of mine bought a HP laptop and she said the service was very good and was really cheap and the time of sale.

Currys/PCW aren't an Apple authorised repair centre. Its a lot of money, but one repair could cost you more than the cost of the APP. Going to a SCC could take months too, but its the way I'll be going in future if I need to.

7upfree

We bought a 27" iMac in 2010 and took out Applecare. When it went in for the Apple HDD swapout recently it was discovered that the display was suffering screen burn. Swapped out under Applecare, so worth the money in our case.

uncle_sam_ie

7upfree wrote: »

We bought a 27" iMac in 2010 and took out Applecare. When it went in for the Apple HDD swapout recently it was discovered that the display was suffering screen burn. Swapped out under Applecare, so worth the money in our case.

The GPU went on my wife's iMac 2 years after she bought it. Applecare covered it so, it was worth it in our case too.

Dublinstiofán

Friend of mine had Applecare and had his Macbook pro fixed twice. They still couldn't fix the problem so they gave him a new unit with current specs worth €2700. Was worth it in his case too.

On a related note, remember the hullabaloo about apple not conforming to EU
Standards of a 2 year warranty, does anybody know if this has been applied
In Ireland yet?

Sad Professor

Dublinstiofán wrote: »

On a related note, remember the hullabaloo about apple not conforming to EU
Standards of a 2 year warranty, does anybody know if this has been applied
In Ireland yet?

That issue was related to Apple not sufficiently informing customers in their stores as to their consumer rights. Apple don't, nor are they no required to, offer a 2 year manufacturer's warranty under European law. However, in instances where they are the seller of the product they are required to guarantee the product for a minimum of two years (or more depending on the country). This is separate from the manufacturer's warranty. As a result of the EU action Apple have added a link to their website informing customers of their rights.

hoodwinked

swingking wrote: »

Your rights are NOT with the manufacturer. In fact they owe you nothing except the warranty.

Your rights are with the point of sale - so that could be Apple themselves but only if bought directly from Apple. Otherwise people who bought from bricks and mortar need to go back to where they originally bought it from

if you bought it directly from apple, in Cork they will send you to compu b as one of their authorised repair center anyway, apple themselves don't deal with macbook repairs from ireland,

last time in the 13th month my macbook failed i had to bring it into compu b, the staff luckily were lovely and fixed the problem for free considering it was only 13 months old.

as for apple care i wished i did invest in it for piece of mind now, im afraid of parts breaking,

but in saying that my mac book is three years old and so far has only had the above issue...

(well other than the chargers failing every year or so and having to buy new ones)

RoboRat

Its like any insurance really... worth the money if you need it, hard to justify if you don't.

Personally, I would go down the SCC route if it ever developed a problem within a reasonable timeframe and I would consider 3 years a reasonable timeframe. Like the OP I work in retail and I hate being that guy too but if you shell out some serious money I expect it to last if I am treating it right. I think the problem with some people and the SCC is that they don't have a clue of what reasonable is and expect their products to last forever whilst being used 24/7!

Consumer rights in this country and the SCC favour the consumer so you may as well use them... we get bent over for everything else!

doctorchopper

I bought my macbookpro from harvey normans and they offer a extended warranty for half the price of apple care, charger quit 18 months after purchase, they gave me a new one so that basically paid for the warranty.

whiterebel

doctorchopper wrote: »

I bought my macbookpro from harvey normans and they offer a extended warranty for half the price of apple care, charger quit 18 months after purchase, they gave me a new one so that basically paid for the warranty.

Its good it worked out well for you, but what happens if something goes wrong inside the machine. They sell those on the grounds that they can repair a laptop, but in most cases they won't have the necessary training to work on a Mac.
When I was up in Apple Tech Support, we used to get hundreds of people that bought PC World's coverplan, and when they had a problem PC World told them to call Apple. Problem was, Apple didn't repair under PC World's coverplan. So they had bought a plan with no hardware, and no software support. Man, we used to have people either in an apoplectic rage or just broken down crying on the phone after spending up to £500 on a useless coverplan. One guy rang in to Apple 8 times in the space of 15 minues, as PC World just kept giving him different numbers for the call centre......:D

miralize

I had to replace a retina display on my MBP bought in June. If I was out of warranty (which I'm not anyway, but I do have Applecare), the display would have cost €691, more than double the cost of Applecare. It may not be worth it if youre tight for money, but it would be a huge inconvenience if you dont have it and something does break.