Not sure if people are still interested in reading about this journey... but let's continue.
Update #3:
9. June 21, 2017: received a call from Genius lead who had been tasked to review my case and see what the heck is going on / why the delays, additional replacements... Explained situation - was told he'd look into it and get back to me. No call back.
10. June 22, 2017: called in to check on the status of logic board repair. Informed that they had ordered another topcase to replace the one that had already been replaced. Another 2 day turnaround. Ask to speak with store manager who promptly gave me a call and spent 30 minutes on the phone trying to understand the situation from beginning to end. Told me that he would be my point of contact moving forward with my machine and experience at this particular Apple store. Asked him, after all that's happened, if we could entertain just replacing my machine in favour for a 2017. Without making any promises, he had me send him all documentation I had to his email and he'd get back to me. .. here we go again.
To recap: Brand new replacement MBP - keyboard issues. Top case repair turned into logic board repair which turned into replacing the topcase that had replaced the original one. Lost? Me too.
Update #4:
Continuing the saga. Brand new replacement MBP has come in. Fantastic - upgraded me to 2017. Now working with a 15" early-2017 tbMBP 2017 2.9/1TB/560.
Now the unfortunate part: despite maintaining my stance that they did
something to the keyboards between the 2016 and 2017 (alluding to the improved sturdiness/rigidity of the keys), the high-pitched clicking persists on some 2017 MacBooks. Even worse, with this brand spanking new 2017 machine the issue persists at regular temperatures and is noticeable 100% of the time - even when the computer is turned off. The issue occurs across essentially the entire middle row of keys, extending from the "a" through to the ' key, and are reproducible on ALL key presses regardless of computer temperature.
Of interest is the fact that the high-pitched click only occurs when tapping the bottom half of the keys (imagine splitting the key horizontally and clicking the lower part = high frequency sound, clicking the upper part = no noticeable sound).
At this point: not sure if Apple is just playing with me, or if I'm just a signet of bad luck. This computer was BTO, and assembled within the last 10 days. Not only that, there's a noticeable nick in the chassis on one of the two left USB ports (attached), so I'm entirely unclear where Apple's QA is at this point.
Calling into the store manager who helped me through this ordeal to see if anything additional can be done at this point. This is now my second CRU on this machine and the issue persists - and definitely
worse this time around, and on a 2017 machine no less. I forsee another topcase repair attempt (as the manager already told me that another replacement is unlikely). I totally feel like the customer from hell but is this not absolutely ridiculous..?