- in 2019 spent more than €3K to buy the best macbook 15' available (> 2 months of average salary in my Europe country)
- 2 weeks before the warranty (1y) the spacebar broke, the SPACEBAR!!!. It was a design issue and it got replaced in a few days by the local service under warranty.
- 1 year later, the battery starts dying out. Go to the authorized repairer and it was going to cost me ~€750 to replace the battery since I had to replace the entire keyboard and trackpad to do that.
- I found a PC repair shop that said he can do it for a couple hundred €, and it worked fine
- 3 months later the laptop shut down unexpectedly. The apple refused to fix it (even paying) because I used a battery not official. The Mac is now a brick
So 2.5y of personal use (not professional) cost me €3.5K. More expensive than a cheap car.
edit: the battery replacement with all top case cost me ~€750. Confirmed looking back at the emails
> 1 year later, the battery starts dying out. Go to the authorized repairer and it was going to cost me > €1K to replace the battery since I had to replace the entire keyboard and trackpad to do that.
So what you seem to be saying is that Apple laptop batteries cannot be replaced for less than €1K if the laptop is out of warranty?
Absolutely incredible. If that's the case, it should really be reported as front page news so that nobody else makes the mistake of buying an Apple laptop ever again.
It costs $249 for a 2019 15" MBP battery (not 15', not sure they ever made them that big, GP's laptop may be special). GP's issue is that Apple, per their story, wanted to replace the keyboard and trackpad as well and wanted to charge more on top of the battery replacement.
I got the cost confirmed by two different repair shops. They don't officially replace the battery only, but the whole top case assembly replaced with a cost of something ~€750 in 2021. I checked the emails we exchanged.
The part is the same, but the price changes depending on the cause code entered into GSX; if it's sold as a battery replacement, the cost of the replacement topcase is much less than if you spilt a drink on the keyboard.
The AASP was screwing you over, either deliberately or by ignorance.
Batteries are a replaceable component, apple doesn't make it easy but it's not particularly harder than any other device. It's not soldered in and doesn't touch the top-case.
Now: if the battery expanded and caused internal damage (bending the top case and damaging the keyboard) then what you said makes sense, but that's a pretty glaring omission if so.
The comparison is not to a new macbook pro, it's to a 2019 one. The 2019 macbook pro is currently giving 0 performance as it is a brick. 2013 Toshiba wins
I've worked in laptop repair for various brands before (Acer, Dell, Compaq). Whenever people ask my advice I always recommend they buy a laptop extended warranty, and I buy it myself. It usually pays for itself on the first service call.
That said, a thousand Euros to replace a battery is ludicrous. No consumer should be charged that, warranty or no.
For reference, I recently got a second hand recent ThinkPad with a dud battery and bought the genuine replacement battery for AU$200 (€123) and could replace it myself as it's an FRU.
Apple should not be charging literally an entire order of magnitude more for the same part, regardless of the service cost.
The only reason they'd require a full top case replacement would be if there was additional damage making them unable to guarantee safety of the new battery
- in 2019 spent more than €3K to buy the best macbook 15' available (> 2 months of average salary in my Europe country)
- 2 weeks before the warranty (1y) the spacebar broke, the SPACEBAR!!!. It was a design issue and it got replaced in a few days by the local service under warranty.
- 1 year later, the battery starts dying out. Go to the authorized repairer and it was going to cost me ~€750 to replace the battery since I had to replace the entire keyboard and trackpad to do that.
- I found a PC repair shop that said he can do it for a couple hundred €, and it worked fine
- 3 months later the laptop shut down unexpectedly. The apple refused to fix it (even paying) because I used a battery not official. The Mac is now a brick
So 2.5y of personal use (not professional) cost me €3.5K. More expensive than a cheap car.
edit: the battery replacement with all top case cost me ~€750. Confirmed looking back at the emails