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Matthew Attoe · 10:38 AM

Hi,

Was thinking about getting Applecare for my Mac Pro and came accross this on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Apple-Mac-Pro-...1%7C240%3A1308

As the saying goes, if it seems to good to be true then it probably is, so I thought I'd check with you guys first to see what you think.

The seller has >99% positive feedback on over 10,000 transactions so would seem genuine, but you never know!

If it is genuine, how can they do it for so cheap?

As always, many thanks,

Matthew

justmetoo · Apr 14, 2009, 02:28 PM

I purchased AC for a Quad G5 from a third party vendor for $99 U.S. and it registered fine with Apple, and transferred to the next owner perfectly.

I was so happy with the price I bought from the same vendor again for my 2006 MP, but that AC number was already claimed (probably hacked?) so they immediately replaced it with another, and that registered fine.

I have made numerous extended warranty claims with these 3rd party AC purchases and all were filled by Apple. AC has saved me LITERALLY thousands of dollars in repairs (replaced core in Quad G5, replacement X1900XT, soon replaced by Quadro 4500 512 (free upgrade), and a DVD drive just last week).

AppleCare is worth it IMHO, and I would buy it again from 3rd party vendor, but just be d_mn careful. My vendor is a local pawn shop, so the gods only know where they got them...

SierraDragon · Apr 14, 2009, 07:09 PM

Applecare overall is not a life cycle cost effective purchase, anecdotal reports notwithstanding. Most repairs occur under free warranty during year one. At US$249 for a $999 MacBook just to cover 13-36 months, one is paying a lot (25% added cost, up front) just to deal with potential future hardware failures on a box after it is old enough that its value has already depreciated greatly.

At a minimum, buyers should wait 11.5 months to even consider Applecare; at that time spending $249 on an aging box (the box is no longer worth $999, so Applecare probably costs about 40% of the box value!) may not seem like such a good idea (unless one bought a lemon that has repeatedly been to the shop already). Don't worry, Apple will remind you by sending multiple emails begging you to buy Applecare as you approach 12 months because the profit on Applecare sales is huge.

Buying Applecare is like playing a perverse reverse lottery, and like a lottery the math does not even remotely compute, but obviously it makes some folks feel good. Giving one's money to Apple a year in advance of coverage is even less logical. Personally I think everyone but me should buy Applecare so Apple makes lots of unearned money and can keep prices down for the rest of us...

(However if the AC cost is cheap enough and enough things are included in the purchase (e.g. displays) buying AC can make sense.)

-Allen Wicks

Simon · Apr 15, 2009, 02:54 AM

This is a thread about MP AC, not about MB AC. The cost of AC is nothing compared to the cost of a new MP.

But let me still challenge the point you tried to argue. Your reasoning is all nice and fine, but in the end it doesn't matter how much the cost of AC represents in terms of what a Mac is worth. What do you tell people who have $250 for AC, but not $999 for a new MB when their MB breaks down after 14 months? And don't tell me it doesn't happen. It does. MLB failure out of warranty means you can pretty much go out and buy a new MB. If you don't have >$999 what then? Had you spend the $250 you did have, you'd be fine. But now you're screwed.

I'm not trying to say that AC is generally worth it (and for the record the MBP I'm typing this on now doesn't have AC). But buyers on a tight budget who need their Mac to last need to ask themselves if they can afford a new MLB (~$700) or a new Mac (>$999) should theirs break down after the initial one year warranty. If the answer is no, AC is pretty obvious no matter how much its costs is compared to the market (not personal!) value of the Mac at that time.

Matthew Attoe · Apr 15, 2009, 06:02 AM

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the replies and advice.

In the UK Mac Pro AppleCare from Apple is £195 - the eBay one is £50. To me, the £50 one is a no-brainer - i only paid £1,000 for the Mac Pro anyway

I was just concerned about the authenticity of buying one from eBay and if anyone had any experience of buying AppleCare this way. I'd hate to find out in 2 years time that my AppleCare was actually void for some reason when I needed it

I've done some more research on the www and thanks to justmetoo it seems like it should be ok.

Thanks again,

Matthew

justmetoo · Apr 15, 2009, 07:33 AM

No problem Matthew.
You'll know if the AC you bought is valid as soon as you register it...

Allen Wicks-- I appreciate your logic, and have read many of your other fine posts, but as Simon says (geez, that was unintended...) buying AC is context dependent.

Apologies for reiteration (but obviously the message didn't get through) I bought AC the first time when I purchased a PM Quad G5 with a liquid cooling system. The entire core needed to be replaced to fix a single defective cooling fan-- $1600 or so.
When I sold the G5 having AC was a definite selling point to the customer, and the $99 3rd party AC transferred no problem.

I bought AC for my 1st generation Mac Pro precisely because it was a 1st generation and an unknown quantity. I've had two of the crappy X1900XT's replaced, and finally they replaced it with a Quadro 4500 512 card (can't remember what that would've cost, but over $1500).

And just last week AC replaced my DVD drive, would've cost $388...

So $99 for AC's peace of mind is well spent... I wouldn't pay full price for it though if you can find a reliable 3rd party seller.

angelmb · Apr 15, 2009, 10:06 AM

My Mac Pro and its 30" display are AppleCare covered. My iMac 24" isn't and since it is out of warranty (first aluminum enclosure iteration), I am upset about it. I will follow this thread just cause my MBP -unibody- has to get AppleCare no matter what. AppleCare replaced the bad motherboard and hard disk my 17" PowerBook had.

As 'justmetoo' says, when I sold the PowerBook 17" still having AppleCare on it was the selling point cause I sold it at 1/2 the retail price so the buyer could easily think 'what gives!?', AppleCare did it.

So Matthew, if you get it and once you have it registered, if you let us know about it, that would be really nice of you.

Veltliner · Apr 15, 2009, 09:34 PM

If you pay with a credit card, you may get a second year of warranty free.

I wouldn't pay 250$ for one additional year of warranty for a desktop machine.

Simon · Apr 16, 2009, 02:09 AM

Originally Posted by Veltliner

I wouldn't pay 250$ for one additional year of warranty for a desktop machine.

Nobody is.

AppleCare extends the standard warranty by two years.

SierraDragon · Apr 16, 2009, 11:42 AM

Agreed, buying AC is context dependent. Each purchase is a new life cycle (and cash flow) analysis. Also agreed, ...$99 for AC's peace of mind is well spent.

Note however that most buyers spend much more than US$99 for AC; most probably pay full price. Buying with a credit card that covers year two means that one pays all that front money just to cover one year, the third year of ownership. The facts are that only a very, very few hardware failures occur precisely during year three, making the percentage cost of AC ridiculously high.

Also note that 2+ years post purchase the most common repairs are easily done cheaply with newer better hardware. Replacing a Superdrive, for instance, can be done for less than $99 and one gets a faster drive; same thing for hard drives. When my MBP drive fails I will happily replace it with a new one twice the size and twice as fast - - I don't even want another drive as slow and small as the original.

Lemon items like the 1900XT cards often end up with continually-extended warranties. And the existence of "lemons" like 1900XTs or water cooled G5s becomes apparent within a year of introduction, so folks can wait 11.5 months to see how solid any given hardware is before purchasing AC.

-Allen Wicks

glideslope · Apr 17, 2009, 08:30 AM

Originally Posted by SierraDragon

Applecare overall is not a life cycle cost effective purchase, anecdotal reports notwithstanding. Most repairs occur under free warranty during year one. At US$249 for a $999 MacBook just to cover 13-36 months, one is paying a lot (25% added cost, up front) just to deal with potential future hardware failures on a box after it is old enough that its value has already depreciated greatly.

At a minimum, buyers should wait 11.5 months to even consider Applecare; at that time spending $249 on an aging box (the box is no longer worth $999, so Applecare probably costs about 40% of the box value!) may not seem like such a good idea (unless one bought a lemon that has repeatedly been to the shop already). Don't worry, Apple will remind you by sending multiple emails begging you to buy Applecare as you approach 12 months because the profit on Applecare sales is huge.

Buying Applecare is like playing a perverse reverse lottery, and like a lottery the math does not even remotely compute, but obviously it makes some folks feel good. Giving one's money to Apple a year in advance of coverage is even less logical. Personally I think everyone but me should buy Applecare so Apple makes lots of unearned money and can keep prices down for the rest of us...

(However if the AC cost is cheap enough and enough things are included in the purchase (e.g. displays) buying AC can make sense.)

-Allen Wicks

Story: Writer walks into Apple Store with Faithful 18m old Power Mac G5 in June 07. Machine is failing to RR to the DVD Drive, random RR errors to all HD's. Failure/surge of Power Supply damaged DVD Drive, and fried the HD BUS.

Store manager asks me if it would be acceptable to replace the machine with a new (not refurb-although I would have accepted a refurb) 2.66 Mac Pro. My HD's were ok. They would not replace the incompatible 3rd party 2gb of RAM. Fair enough. I said, sure how long? He went into the back swapped HD's and I left with a new Mac Pro 2.66.

Apple care is worth it on a Mac Pro.

I have also used it twice on iMacs. Once to replace the motherboard on the Swivel Neck iMac due to a fried on board GPU 14 months into ownership. Once to replace an iMac DV400 (ah, the good old days) with a CRT that went south after 19m of ownership.

The expenses Apple incurred in my G5 diagnostics/replacement Power Mac easily covered any AC costs by me over the last 17yrs.

Others experiences may vary.

chris v · Apr 18, 2009, 09:27 AM

I've had over $2000.00 (maybe 3000.00) worth of work done on machines that were covered under Apple Care. If it were a shoddy program where you had to suffer endless phone queues and attempts to not honor their obligation, I'd say don't buy it, but it has had value for me beyond its cost on at least 3 occasions. The service is cheerful and prompt, and I'm at least $1000.00 less-broke than I would have been had I not purchased it on all the machines I have.

SierraDragon · Apr 19, 2009, 02:08 AM

Sorry guys, but these anecdotal reports mean nada. Ask the question: on average, what percentage of Macs have major failures during years 2-3? The statistical reality is that major repairs during years 2-3 are uncommon and/or inexpensive enough to generally make AC a bad deal. I have owned or managed several dozen Macs since 1985 and the failure rate in years 2-3 has been less than 5%.

If it makes you feel good or you cannot self-insure, buy it. Just do not claim that it is generally life-cycle cost logical because it is not (unless one finds a super-cheap price).

-Allen Wicks

Simon · 04:52 AM

Wrong again. As I already said above statistics is meaningless to an individual who's on a tight budget. If somebody doesn't have $1k for a new MB what good is it to him to knwo that he's only a 1 in 20 case? That's the thing that means nada here.

Also, when it comes to portables, the amount of computers that fail within two or three years in one way or another is large. Take the slot-loading opticals in our MB(P)s. I'd wager one in ten fails within three years (I have three broken ones right here at home for example). Now sure a SD is no huge deal (maybe $100), but if you let Apple exchange it (as most regular customers will) that will end up costing you about $400. AC means you just saved $150. AC also means you had free phone support to deal with the issues. Does a geek need/wan tht? Probably not. Do most regular customers? Sure thing.

Guess how many iBook G4 MLBs failed during years two and three? I'd say about one in a dozen. Swapping the MLB means about $700. To a regular customer not having AC in such a case only makes sense if the guy is loaded and can afford to simply toss the broken Mac altogether and replace it with a brand new one. For everybody else AC meant saving $450 and having Apple deal with the entire mess for them.

Now his thread is about the MP anyway. And the MP makes it really easy. You buy a MP for north of $2.5k. AC for the MP is $250. That's ten percent for two years of a three year lifetime. Who in their right mind would spend $2.5k for a MP, another let's say $1k for extras and then doesn't spend $80/year during three years for AC coverage? There's simply no case to be made for being stingy here. The savings amount to nothing compared to what the hardware (and repairs!) end up costing.

If anything I'd argue the Mac mini or iMac make it hardest to decide if AC is really worth it. Portables (delicate) and the MP (expensive) are a no-brainer though.

Matthew Attoe · Apr 19, 2009, 03:19 PM

Well, I just bought Mac Pro AppleCare from a private seller on ebay for the equivalent of $45 delivered.

That'll do me value-wise.

Just have to hope it's all legit and registers okay.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again,

Matthew

SierraDragon · Apr 21, 2009, 11:12 AM

Originally Posted by Matthew Attoe

Well, I just bought Mac Pro AppleCare from a private seller on ebay for the equivalent of $45 delivered. That'll do me value-wise.

Agreed, that is excellent value!

-Allen

Matthew Attoe · 02:36 PM

Well, it's arrived and all painlessly registered - even had the certificate emailed to me from Apple already :-)

Provided I don't encounter any long term issues with the AppleCare Plan, I can recommend buying AC this way. I will certainly be doing it this way for all my future Apple products if I can get it this cheap!

Now, I wonder if I can get AC on a Dell Mini 9 running Leopard :-)

Thanks again everyone for all your advice,

Matthew

angelmb · May 8, 2009, 04:59 AM

Thanks for letting us know. I have purchased it for the Unibody MacBook Pro, feedback will be given once it arrives.

Just curious, did you get the Apple Care packaging itself or was it some downloable file?

Matthew Attoe · May 8, 2009, 05:55 AM

Hi Angelmb,

I actually received the AppleCare box/package with the CD and documention. Apple then emailed me the certificate once I'd registered.

Hope this helps,

Matthew

angelmb · May 8, 2009, 09:09 AM

Thanks Matthew, I got an e-mail from the seller which reads "We will email the code to your eBay email address within 48 business hrs. This excludes weekends and public holidays." so I have to wonder if I am going the get the Apple Care box or not… I took care to buy the one listed as shipping from here in Spain, I'll know next Monday. Anyhow, it is a great deal.

Matthew Attoe · May 8, 2009, 10:12 AM

Glad you got sorted. I was going to pick up one of the emailed codes myself, but the only reason I didn't was because the retail boxed one ended up being a fair chunk cheaper.

Perhaps you could let us all know how the codes worked out and the ebayer you bought from for future reference.

Cheers,

Matthew

angelmb · May 8, 2009, 02:43 PM

Originally Posted by Matthew Attoe

Perhaps you could let us all know how the codes worked out and the ebayer you bought from for future reference.

Same seller you bought from.

Rest assured once I get the code and have registered the MacBook Pro I will let you all know.

Matthew Attoe · 06:04 PM

Hi again Angelmb,

I didn't actually buy mine from the link I posted - sorry if I didn't make that clear. I would've have bought from that seller if I hadn't found another seller selling the "boxed" version for about 25% less. Pretty much a 1-in-a-100 chance, but I guess I was lucky this time :-) Lucky as in I'll-be-holding-my breath-when-I-take-my-Mac-Pro-in-for-service kinda way :-) :-) :-)

Would still love to know how it all goes for you :-)

All the best,

Matthew

Drakino · May 8, 2009, 10:02 PM

I've bought 2 AppleCare plans through the same seller on eBay, and had no problems with them. One was for a family members MacBook, and the other for my Mac Pro. The cost savings of eBay for these is amazing, and well worth it.

I do agree with waiting though. I buy AppleCare on my machines once they hit the 11 month mark if I feel I'm going to hold onto the machine for a lot longer.

angelmb · May 11, 2009, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by Matthew Attoe

Would still love to know how it all goes for you :-)

Beautifully. The seller I bought AppleCare from is fast and serious… the MacBook Pro is already covered by AppleCare until 2011, got the certificate e-mail from Apple too. Great deal.

Matthew Attoe · May 12, 2009, 08:28 AM

Glad it all worked out for you Angelmb :-)

angelmb · May 18, 2009, 02:06 PM

Better than that, I have also bought AppleCare for an Apple Display and again, all went satisfactorily.

HowEver · May 18, 2009, 07:13 PM

I have no idea how he does it, but I bought MBP AppleCare from that same seller, and it worked fine. He just emails the codes, and offers to mail the box but since the fee to send it is high it negates the deal, and the code worked fine.

Originally Posted by Matthew Attoe

Hi,

Was thinking about getting Applecare for my Mac Pro and came accross this on eBay:

Apple Mac Pro / Power Mac AppleCare Extended Warranty on eBay, also, Other Apple Macintosh, Apple Macintosh, Computing (end time 24-Apr-09 14:51:25 BST)

As the saying goes, if it seems to good to be true then it probably is, so I thought I'd check with you guys first to see what you think.

The seller has >99% positive feedback on over 10,000 transactions so would seem genuine, but you never know!

If it is genuine, how can they do it for so cheap?

As always, many thanks,

Matthew

Todd Madson · May 22, 2009, 03:46 PM

I'm a firm believer in Applecare.

When my G5 2.5 dual had a cooling system leak, it killed the motherboard, processors, power supply and cooling system.
Applestore indicated it would have been a $3100 repair, more expensive than the computer itself to cover cost of parts,
repair work, etc.

That Applecare more than paid for itself.

Your mileage may vary.