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Ask HN: Burned by Apple Repair, are there any solutions?

by sss111 on 3/20/25, 4:30 PM with 16 comments

Took my perfectly working 2020 MacBook Pro to the Apple Store last week for a battery replacement—quoted $249+ tax. They sent it to their service center, then said it wouldn’t power on, blaming a logic board failure, and upped it to $698+ tax. It worked fine at drop-off.

I've tried my best escalating but to no avail. I got it back unrepaired yesterday and it is completely dead now. It worked before Apple touched it, I don't know what to do, posting this from my phone.

Has anyone dealt with this? Any ideas on how to get it back to working condition again?

  • by ActorNightly on 3/20/25, 5:22 PM

    In Apples "opinion", you are supposed to pay to play, thats what their ecosystem is designed around. Pay to get it fully repaired or get a new one. Apple owners are supposed to have money, thats what they built their brand image around.

    Alternatively, its really not that hard to switch to a cheaper and more reliable, laptop with Elementary OS Linux distro.

  • by apparent on 3/21/25, 3:59 AM

    There is a different team within Apple that can help with this. I think it's called Consumer Relations or some such thing. They're hard to connect with, but once you do they can work magic. Don't give up on this! If they've broken your computer, especially if you can prove this via the usage history on the device, then you should be taken care of. For example, if you can show you were actively using the computer the day of the appointment, well after the time that you created the appointment, that would be evidence that you didn't make a fake battery appointment in order to defraud them.

    I'm surprised they didn't turn it on or anything at dropoff. I feel like they usually check stuff or disable Find My when I drop devices off. But maybe for battery replacements it isn't necessary?

  • by brudgers on 3/20/25, 9:47 PM

    If it was me, I would use a local independent repair shop that has stayed in business awhile.

    Any business that has to ship things off for repair is not qualified to do repairs.

    As for brands, I would avoid those with short warranties plus depot service for mission critical machines.

  • by mattl on 3/20/25, 4:32 PM

    https://rossmanngroup.com/

    He has a YouTube channel and does lots of repairs like this

  • by markus_zhang on 3/21/25, 12:59 AM

    Post on X or any social media and tag anyone with 1M+ followers that hates Apple.