MacPrices.net

AppleCare A Questionable Bargain? - Depends On Your Risk Tolerance

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

by Charles W. Moore

siliconvalleywatcher.com's Tom Foremski blogs that on the one occasion he’d previously had to use an AppleCare extended warranty, abut 5 years ago, he had a good result, but a recent a very bad experience has soured him and he’s wondering if Apple is getting too arrogant in its dealings with customers.

Foremski’s Macbook Pro, which he says he uses almost exclusively as a desktop substitute machine. developed video issues that as he describes it left most of the screen blank and with horizontal and vertical lines across it like a multicolored weave.

AppleCare sent the laptop back to him without repair, saying it wasn’t covered, contending that the problem was a cracked screen caused by excessive pressure on the screen. Foremski explained that the Macbook Pro sits on his desk, and had had no excessive pressure put on it. The AppleCare person argued that excessive temperature changes could’ve cracked the screen.

Foremski said his San Francisco apartment gets mildly chilly in the winter and mildly warm in the summer - or frequently vice-versa - but never gets wild temperature swings, and that he doesn’t travel with the MacBook Pro, preferring to use his MacBook Air as a road machine. He adds that he’s subsequently been informed that extreme temperature differences could indeed theoretically crack the screen, especially with machines like Apple’s Macbook Pro/Air units whose Intel processors can get very very hot.

As a personal observation, here in Nova Scotia where I live, my Mac laptops get used in temperatures from the upper 80°s or occasionally 90°s F like the weather we’ve been having in late August this year, down to to not far above freezing temperatures sometimes in the winter in parts of our not centrally-heated house or in cars on road trips, and I’ve never experienced any screen problems in all my years of laptop use.

Nevertheless, Foremski reported that Apple still refused to repair the MacBook Pro unless I he coughed up $1295, which is probably close to if not exceeding the MacBook Pro’s used market value depending on model, especially in light of recent price reductions. Foremski declined and ended up repairing the screen himself at a cost of $230 for a replacement display panel and several hours of his own labor. His ultimate conclusion from this episode is that it’s better to save the several hundred dollars on AppleCare coverage and assume the risk yourself once the basic one-year warranty expires.

I agree. I’ve never purchased AppleCare for any of the new Macs I’ve purchased over the past 17 years, and never even made a warranty claim under the basic 1 year warranties on any of my Apple notebooks. I simply don’t believe that it’s a worthwhile expenditure given the track record I’ve experienced, although some users who’ve had catastrophic hardware failures repaired under AppleCare would no doubt argue the contrary.

I figure that at this point, had I purchased AppleCare for each of the laptop Macs I’ve purchased over the past 13 years, I’d have spent something like the price of a new MacBook Pro and with no benefit to show for it aside from some peace of mind that might have been illusory anyway, so even if I did now have a major hardware meltdown outside the one-year warranty period that I had to pay for myself, I’m still ahead of the game by having not bought AppleCare.

Note also that that many major credit cards will double the manufacturer’s warranty period (often capped at two years) on purchases made with their cards. However, if you use your computer for work be sure to read the fine print, since most credit card warranty extensions don’t apply to machines used for business purposes.

Insurance is another matter, and I do keep my late-model Mac laptops insured with all-perils coverage using a personal articles rider on my homeowner’s insurance policy, which also covered my kids’ computers when they were at college.

Another thing to consider is that with the historically very modest prices of computers these days — even Apple laptops — spending two or three hundred dollars on extended warranty coverage now represents a substantial fraction of the cost of a brand-new or certified refurbished replacement computer with a fresh warranty, possibly more power and a better feature set than your present machine. It was different back in the day when you could spend $5,000 or more on a high-end PowerBook. For example, back in August, 1997, the PowerBook 3400c/240 was selling for a suck-in-your-breath $5,879.02, and its lower-end sibling, the 3400c/180 went for a still-daunting $3,821.02 (MacMall ad) but with 13” MacBook Pros selling new for $1,198, and 15-inchers for $1,699, the dynamics have changed radically.

A Consumer Reports survey on the experience of readers who had purchased extended warranties on electronic equipment found that on average, consumers had paid about as much for the extended warranty, by the time the product needed service or repair,.

One alternative to purchasing AppleCare is to take the money you would’ve spent on purchasing an extended warranty and invest it. If you do need service or repair after the original warranty runs out, you can cash in your investment to help pay for it, hopefully with some interest or growth added. However, if your Mac survives the initial 12 month warranty period with no repairs needed (as is most likely), or is repaired during the first year, the probability of it needing repairs during the subsequent two years is relatively low (although it could happen). Most computer hardware defect problems show up early on, and the likelihood is that your “repair fund” money can remain invested until you upgrade to a new system, at which time you could put it toward the new computer purchase or keep it socked away against potential out-of-warranty repairs on the new machine, adding the amount you would’ve had to pay for AppleCare on the new machine with the attendant dollar cost averaging and so forth.

Personally, I’m tech-savvy enough that I don’t have a lot of interest in extended Apple tech support (Apple’s standard phone tech support on new machines expires after 90 days.),but for for some users AppleCare’s tech support lifeline could be helpful.

Of course, as I alluded to above, it’s partly a matter of how much risk you’re prepared to assume balanced against the certain expenditure of paying AppleCare premiums. You can’t put a price tag on peace of mind. There are instances when the logic board or the display — the most expensive components of a laptop — will fail, but my philosophy on that, still holding true subjectively, is that major failures due to inherent manufacturing faults will usually show up in the first year of basic warranty coverage anyway. The only two serious hardware failures I’ve ever experienced in Mac laptops — a burned-out processor in a WallStreet PowerBook and a failed logic board (presumably) in a G3 iBook happened at the 3.6 year and 6.2 year marks respectively so neither would have been covered by AppleCare. Your mileage may vary of course.

if you’ll sleep better knowing you have AppleCare coverage, don’t let me persuade you otherwise. The degree of risk one is comfortable assuming is a personal matter, and statistical probabilities notwithstanding, with any mass-produced product there will always be a percentage of lemon units, so if you do decide to roll the dice, be aware and prepared that once in a while they turn up snake-eyes.

For more information about Apple’s AppleCare Protection Plan, visit:
http://www.apple.com/support/products/

CM