Thought I'd relate the story of how Apple scared me and then offered me a great deal.
Graphics card on my late-2007 MBP went. Was outside of the 4-year repair-extension that would've fixed it for free. They offered to repair it for a $310 "flat-fee". So, I handed it over and they shipped it off. Got a call this morning that because the optical drive was missing, something I mentioned during my repair "check-in" (removed it a while ago cuz it was broke), it was going to cost $1240 instead to fix! Yikes! On the horn to Apple, 'Bradley' offered me two options: 1) MBP returned to me, unfixed, or 2) speak to a supervisor. I chose #2. 'R.W.' said there is no way I should have to pay that much and something went wrong at the store that accepted my MBP. He would talk to them and get back to me. He called back a few hours later (took a while for the store to return his call). Store was less than accommodating; I could get the laptop back, put the superdrive back in, bring it in and send it off again and have it fixed for $310. Or, if I was to buy a new or refurbed Mac, as a gesture of goodwill, he said Apple would discount the price by $100 + an extra 10% off. Well, maybe it was time to move into this decade and replace the ailing MBP. Since I was interested in a MacBook Air, R.W. offered to send me an external superdrive at no extra cost as well. We looked through the refurb section and, since I run Xcode a lot, picked out a nice 13" MBA (same resolution screen as my 15" MBP, by the way) with 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. $1349 - $100 - %10 - $250 giftcard I got for Christmas + $22 overnight delivery + tax = <$937 for my well-stocked MBA.
tl;dr: Got a refurb 13" MBA (4GB,256SSD) w/ external superdrive for less than $1K out-of-pocket thanks to Apple's good-will gesture and a $250 giftcard
Graphics card on my late-2007 MBP went. Was outside of the 4-year repair-extension that would've fixed it for free. They offered to repair it for a $310 "flat-fee". So, I handed it over and they shipped it off. Got a call this morning that because the optical drive was missing, something I mentioned during my repair "check-in" (removed it a while ago cuz it was broke), it was going to cost $1240 instead to fix! Yikes! On the horn to Apple, 'Bradley' offered me two options: 1) MBP returned to me, unfixed, or 2) speak to a supervisor. I chose #2. 'R.W.' said there is no way I should have to pay that much and something went wrong at the store that accepted my MBP. He would talk to them and get back to me. He called back a few hours later (took a while for the store to return his call). Store was less than accommodating; I could get the laptop back, put the superdrive back in, bring it in and send it off again and have it fixed for $310. Or, if I was to buy a new or refurbed Mac, as a gesture of goodwill, he said Apple would discount the price by $100 + an extra 10% off. Well, maybe it was time to move into this decade and replace the ailing MBP. Since I was interested in a MacBook Air, R.W. offered to send me an external superdrive at no extra cost as well. We looked through the refurb section and, since I run Xcode a lot, picked out a nice 13" MBA (same resolution screen as my 15" MBP, by the way) with 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. $1349 - $100 - %10 - $250 giftcard I got for Christmas + $22 overnight delivery + tax = <$937 for my well-stocked MBA.
tl;dr: Got a refurb 13" MBA (4GB,256SSD) w/ external superdrive for less than $1K out-of-pocket thanks to Apple's good-will gesture and a $250 giftcard
