[subego]

My ex had a breakfast cereal mishap on her MacBook Air. This did a good job trashing the keyboard, but playing around with it for awhile I determine that's the only obvious problem.

She takes it to the Genius, who after a total of five minutes determines it needs a new top case, battery and logic board. Over $800 in repairs.

AFAICT, this diagnosis was based on the Genius failing to make the USB work.

The same USB I used to make the flash drive backup the night before. The same USB which worked for the tech at MacMall.

Who diagnosed the problem as a bad keyboard.


I was the one who suggested she take it to the Apple Store. As someone who likes Apple, I really wish they hadn't ****ed it up.

[Waragainstsleep]

They don't play well with liquid spills. They refused me a logic board swap on one of those 8600M faulty GPU MacBook Pros because a tech at an AASP found ancient dried traces of liquid on the top of the fully functional optical drive. Nothing on the board which would only fail to boot as a result of the GPU which worked well enough to fail their diagnostic test with the 'correct' error code.

[andi*pandi]

that sucks, but perhaps it is a case of CYA.

[subego]

Cover it in Benjamins, apparently.

[Lancer409]

thats a bummer =/

i once had a logic board die out of warrantee on a mbp and the genius wrote it off as a nvidia graphics chip issue for a free board replacement!

before that, i had a 12 inch powerbook g4 that had a very sticky / creaking hinge. it would take force to open/close once it got hot (to the point that i wouldn't move it for fear of tearing apart the hinge..)

genius refused to do anything about it, even though it was covered by applecare and babied throughout its life.


i've had great grapes and rotten grapes on the same cluster... depends which one you get it seems...

[Doc HM]

The main reason that Apple often looks like it's ramping up the repair cost of liquid spill Macs is that they will not replace a single damaged component (logic board for example) while other components that also show signs of liquid damage but are currently working are not replace.
This is because they can't/won't guarantee the replacement part if it is connected to other possibly damaged parts, so they end up speccing a repair that covers every single item that shows any signs of damage. Normally I'm quite happy to diss Apple on repairs but in this case I can see where they are coming from.
I had a customer who spilt red wine into his brand new 11in Air. The only casualty was the airport card, which died but Apple refused to swap it out without replacing the logic board, battery, keyboard and top case.
In the end we took it to a sympathetic reseller who swapped the airport card only.

[subego]

I can understand that policy, but the diagnosis needs to be based on something.

Claming it's because of a non functioning USB when the USB functions perfectly for everyone else verges on fraud.

[OreoCookie]

The problem with liquid spills is corrosion: I spilled apple juice on my last machine. Worked fine (well, the keys were pretty sticky) until the backlight of my lcd failed three months later. Corrosion is a very serious and real problem, so from a customer service point of view, it makes sense to insist that the whole motherboard needs to be replaced.

Other companies, e. g. Nikon*, will simply not repair electronic devices that have come into contact with liquids.


My D80 was killed by a wave on vacation and Nikon service wouldn't even repair it.

[subego]

Saying we have to replace the logic board because of possible corrosion is a much different story than saying your mobo is fried because of a non-functioning USB.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by subego 

Saying we have to replace the logic board because of possible corrosion is a much different story than saying your mobo is fried because of a non-functioning USB.

Regardless of whether the USB port is working or not, spilling liquids onto laptops is a very common occurrence, so Apple has put policies in place. My story about Nikon service is saying that Apple's policy could be much worse (as soon as a liquid has touched your machine, we're not going to repair it, period).

The problem is that corrosion takes time and can eat away at your system one component at a time. My previous machine, a first-gen 2 GHz MacBook Pro (which was 4,5 years old at the time) still worked, I just didn't have an internal screen. So in principle, I could have still used the machine, just not as a notebook. As the failure modes are impossible to predict, I'm just saying it's a sensible strategy as a service provider to exchange the whole motherboard, even if in specific cases, the machine still works.

Personally, I wish Apple would do more to protect electronics against spilled liquids: IBM has introduced ThinkPads which are »spill proof« and I wish Apple would adopt/adapt some sort of »spill proof« technology.

[subego]

Unless it's Apple water damage policy to claim functioning USB ports don't, the fact they have a water damage policy is irrelevant to my scenario.

This isn't about Apple policy, this is about an individual Genius ****ing up.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by subego 

Unless it's Apple water damage policy to claim functioning USB ports don't, the fact they have a water damage policy is irrelevant to my scenario.

I don't disagree, if the Genius has misdiagnosed a functioning USB port to be faulty and that mistake has cost your ex money, then you have every right to be upset. What I was saying is that their liquids damage policy has probably plaid a role here since I assume you've told the genius about the mishap with the cereal bowl, and if the policy is »in case of liquid spill, don't waste time diagnosing small individual failures, but replace the motherboard« then it was probably the deciding factor.

[subego]

It would have cost her money if she hadn't called me, and I sent her there in the first place.

She was honest about the spill.

The deciding factor presented to her was a faulty USB. If their policy is not to diagnose small issues then the Genius ****ed up twice.