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Update: Apple Allowed adding extended AppleCare!! - Dead Logic board: 2011 13" MBA.

lokiju

lokiju

Lifer
EDIT 2 - 9-4-12:
They did their "deeper" analysis and said that everything still pointed to a logic board issue.

This was on Sunday that the determination was made.

I agreed to do the flat rate $280 (plus tax) repair that'd fix any and every issue.

Sunday afternoon I get an automated email from Apple saying "The Apple one-year limited warranty that came with your Mac is almost up. That means it’s your last chance to get the AppleCare Protection Plan, which extends your hardware coverage — along with your telephone technical support — for up to three years from your computer’s purchase date.*"

Well it didn't say which Mac it was referring to and to my knowledge, both my iMac and my MBA's 1 year warranty was up.

So I tried calling them but their AppleCare department was closed until today (Tuesday) in observance of Labor Day.

I called this morning and asked the first guy which Mac it was for and to much surprise it is for my iMac, it's actually not out of the 1 year warranty! This is both awesome and welcome news and a big "doh!" on my part since I replaced the internal OEM hard drive that died about a month ago. I could of saved myself the hassle and money had I known. I had looked up the warranty coverage online before but confused the top message saying out of coverage for the phone support as applying to everything.

They did sadly confirm that my MBA's warrant was indeed past a year by 46 days. I asked him why I didn't get a similar email prior to it's warranty running out like I did for the iMac and he didn't have an answer and said I should of.

I was very calm and polite the whole call and asked him if there was any flexibility on adding on the 3 year Applecare coverage for the MBA and noted that I would most definitely have bought it (which is true) had I received the early warning about it approaching the end of the 1st year of included coverage.

He said he couldn't but he could connect me with some other department and we could ask but he repeated time and again that it very likely would not be allowed and he's never seen anyone be granted an exception that was more than a few days past the 1 year point. He said he recently had a guy that was only 1 week past and they weren't able to make an exception for him.

I didn't hold my breath but waited 20 mins or so until I finally got someone and explained to him about how I had received the email telling me my 1 year warranty was about to expire and offering to extend and that I didn't know which Mac it was for and how the prior guy told me it was for the iMac, etc.

I asked him why I didn't receive any warning for the MBA like I did for the iMac and he looked and said he saw that for some reason I wasn't sent an automated email about it (I'd think they'd not have a way to even see that, but maybe he was being nice and BS'ing me).

I asked if there could be an exception in this case since I did not receive that, he puts me on hold for a bit to do whatever he was doing then comes back and said he was going to make an exception this time (HOLY SHIT YES!!!!!) and that it'll extend my coverage 2 more years until 09/05/2014.

He basically changed their records to show the purchase date of my iMac as 1 year ago today.

I'm a grown man of 32 years old and the symbol of a stoic solid as a rock father figure to my 3 year old son and this random guy on the other end of the phone nearly brought me to tears! No joke. I was soooo grateful, words just do not convey it.

I gladly gave my credit card info and $249 (no tax, yea!) later, I have my agreement number.

As soon as we hung up, I called the Apple store that I left my MBA with and I guess it was lucky it was a holiday as they hadn't shipped it off yet.

I explained to them that I was able to get the AppleCare added and gave them the agreement number and they said they got it and would get it sent off for repair and let me know when it was back in.

I asked for clarification if they send AppleCare covered and flat rate out of pocket repairs the same and they confirmed they do. They send them to the same place and it's the same procedure.

So at the very least I saved myself $30 plus whatever the tax would of been on the out of pocket and now am fully covered if anything comes up in the future.

This was a disheartening and tiring journey but I am so happy with the conclusion!

And I will absolutely be adding the AppleCare to my iMac as well.

Lesson learned. I'll never buy another Mac without by default buying the extended AppleCare going forward, I'm usually of the mindset that warranties are a waste of money but I now truly believe they are warranted for Macs as the support and care you get with that extra cost is second to no other company I've dealt with over my many years in IT as a Sys Admin and with my own personal purchases.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


EDIT 1 - 8-31-12:
Went to local Apple store on my lunch (had appt) and I'm 48 days out of warranty and they said it's a dead logic board. Manager said she couldn't do a thing to help other than offer the cost of the out of pocket repairs off of a new Mac if I would rather.

They'd send it to some offsite 3rd party to fix it and said it's a flat rate $280 regardless of issue/parts.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original Post:
I don't know what happened. I was using it fine then went to reboot it and it went down for the reboot and then came back to only a grey screen. Not even a spinning circle at the bottom center or anything.

I tried resetting the SMC.

I tried resetting the PRAM but doing the Command-Option-P-R keys before the grey screen and held and held and held but it never reset and made beeps like it says it should on Apples site. How long does it take when doing the PRAM reset for it to reboot usually?

I've tried holding shift for safe mode.

I've tried holding ALT to get into recovery.

I've help the power button to force it off to make sure it wasn't stuck in some sleep/hibernation state of sorts.

I've tried with and without connected power.

All I get is literally only a back-lit grey screen and nothing else.

I'm desperate for any other suggestions!
 
Last edited:
That sucks - I never heard of an Apple store using a 3rd party to fix their stuff, but that's probably because all the ones here are huge.

As to fix it, try taking the ssd out and reseating it. It isn't hard and you have nothing to lose.
 
I brought it to another Apple store this morning and they actually offered to run a full diagnostics on it for no cost and will crack it open and reseat the battery and SSD cables.

I really appreciate them going above and beyond the other location and hopefully they'll figure out something simple and get it working for no cost.

If not then at least I know it wasn't something simple I could of fixed myself and it won't be as painful to pay the $280 flat rate.

They said it'll be about 24 hours until I get called with the results.
 
amdhunter said:
How'd it go?
Click to expand...

They did their "deeper" analysis and said that everything still pointed to a logic board issue.

This was on Sunday that the determination was made.

I agreed to do the flat rate $280 (plus tax) repair that'd fix any and every issue.

Sunday afternoon I get an automated email from Apple saying "The Apple one-year limited warranty that came with your Mac is almost up. That means it’s your last chance to get the AppleCare Protection Plan, which extends your hardware coverage — along with your telephone technical support — for up to three years from your computer’s purchase date.*"

Well it didn't say which Mac it was referring to and to my knowledge, both my iMac and my MBA's 1 year warranty was up.

So I tried calling them but their AppleCare department was closed until today (Tuesday) in observance of Labor Day.

I called this morning and asked the first guy which Mac it was for and to much surprise it is for my iMac, it's actually not out of the 1 year warranty! This is both awesome and welcome news and a big "doh!" on my part since I replaced the internal OEM hard drive that died about a month ago. I could of saved myself the hassle and money had I known. I had looked up the warranty coverage online before but confused the top message saying out of coverage for the phone support as applying to everything.

They did sadly confirm that my MBA's warrant was indeed past a year by 46 days. I asked him why I didn't get a similar email prior to it's warranty running out like I did for the iMac and he didn't have an answer and said I should of.

I was very calm and polite the whole call and asked him if there was any flexibility on adding on the 3 year Applecare coverage for the MBA and noted that I would most definitely have bought it (which is true) had I received the early warning about it approaching the end of the 1st year of included coverage.

He said he couldn't but he could connect me with some other department and we could ask but he repeated time and again that it very likely would not be allowed and he's never seen anyone be granted an exception that was more than a few days past the 1 year point. He said he recently had a guy that was only 1 week past and they weren't able to make an exception for him.

I didn't hold my breath but waited 20 mins or so until I finally got someone and explained to him about how I had received the email telling me my 1 year warranty was about to expire and offering to extend and that I didn't know which Mac it was for and how the prior guy told me it was for the iMac, etc.

I asked him why I didn't receive any warning for the MBA like I did for the iMac and he looked and said he saw that for some reason I wasn't sent an automated email about it (I'd think they'd not have a way to even see that, but maybe he was being nice and BS'ing me).

I asked if there could be an exception in this case since I did not receive that, he puts me on hold for a bit to do whatever he was doing then comes back and said he was going to make an exception this time (HOLY SHIT YES!!!!!) and that it'll extend my coverage 2 more years until 09/05/2014.

He basically changed their records to show the purchase date of my iMac as 1 year ago today.

I'm a grown man of 32 years old and the symbol of a stoic solid as a rock father figure to my 3 year old son and this random guy on the other end of the phone nearly brought me to tears! No joke. I was soooo grateful, words just do not convey it.

I gladly gave my credit card info and $249 (no tax, yea!) later, I have my agreement number.

As soon as we hung up, I called the Apple store that I left my MBA with and I guess it was lucky it was a holiday as they hadn't shipped it off yet.

I explained to them that I was able to get the AppleCare added and gave them the agreement number and they said they got it and would get it sent off for repair and let me know when it was back in.

I asked for clarification if they send AppleCare covered and flat rate out of pocket repairs the same and they confirmed they do. They send them to the same place and it's the same procedure.

So at the very least I saved myself $30 plus whatever the tax would of been on the out of pocket and now am fully covered if anything comes up in the future.

This was a disheartening and tiring journey but I am so happy with the conclusion!

And I will absolutely be adding the AppleCare to my iMac as well.

Lesson learned. I'll never buy another Mac without by default buying the extended AppleCare going forward, I'm usually of the mindset that warranties are a waste of money but I now truly believe they are warranted for Macs as the support and care you get with that extra cost is second to no other company I've dealt with over my many years in IT as a Sys Admin and with my own personal purchases.
 
Bear in mind if you bought the iMac with a credit card, your credit card will double your warranty for free. Because of that, and Apple's fairly high reliability, I usually don't buy AppleCare unless I buy something really expensive (like this 27" iMac i7/16GB/6970M I'm typing on...)
 
dclive said:
Bear in mind if you bought the iMac with a credit card, your credit card will double your warranty for free. Because of that, and Apple's fairly high reliability, I usually don't buy AppleCare unless I buy something really expensive (like this 27" iMac i7/16GB/6970M I'm typing on...)
Click to expand...

Do all credit cards offer this?
Can I still walk into the Apple store on Day 370 to have an issue fixed?
Can I still call Apple on day 700 if I have a problem that can be sorted over the phone?
 
TheStu said:
Do all credit cards offer this?
Can I still walk into the Apple store on Day 370 to have an issue fixed?
Can I still call Apple on day 700 if I have a problem that can be sorted over the phone?
Click to expand...

Not all cards by default do.

Only select cards offer it and each card has it's own restrictions.

Here's a good write up about it with links to the different cards.

http://lifehacker.com/5697141/skip-the-extended-warranty-use-a-good-credit-card-instead

This is actually something I did check into but the card I bought my MBA with was a non-"select" kind.
 
amdhunter said:
That sucks - I never heard of an Apple store using a 3rd party to fix their stuff, but that's probably because all the ones here are huge.

As to fix it, try taking the ssd out and reseating it. It isn't hard and you have nothing to lose.
Click to expand...

Laptop logic board swaps are a PITA. Most stores will overnight it to a depot in... I think Tennessee...?
 
TheStu said:
Do all credit cards offer this?
Can I still walk into the Apple store on Day 370 to have an issue fixed?
Can I still call Apple on day 700 if I have a problem that can be sorted over the phone?
Click to expand...

I'm assuming all of your questions are rhetorical. Obviously, it isn't as good as a warranty from Apple, especially if you need software tech support. However, it doesn't cost $250, either, and is something that should always be checked prior to looking into an aftermarket warranty.
 
dclive said:
I'm assuming all of your questions are rhetorical. Obviously, it isn't as good as a warranty from Apple, especially if you need software tech support. However, it doesn't cost $250, either, and is something that should always be checked prior to looking into an aftermarket warranty.
Click to expand...

I do appreciate the suggestion myself.

Its because of people pointing this out to me that I'm looking into possibly going with upgrading my Costco Executive membership to a Costco Amex when it's renewal time in October.

Amex appears to have the best extended warranty.
 
Yep, I have an AmEx and put everything on it. The extended warranty plus 2% cash back on 100% of purchases (with no work on my part) makes the membership fee ($0) a good deal. 🙂
 
dclive said:
I'm assuming all of your questions are rhetorical. Obviously, it isn't as good as a warranty from Apple, especially if you need software tech support. However, it doesn't cost $250, either, and is something that should always be checked prior to looking into an aftermarket warranty.
Click to expand...

Not completely rhetorical, no. I do not have credit cards, and am generally ignorant of them.
 
TheStu said:
Not completely rhetorical, no. I do not have credit cards, and am generally ignorant of them.
Click to expand...

Get an AmEx (free, like from Fidelity) and double all warranties for all products you buy - free.

And get 2% back on all purchases, with no work required on your part. Additional cashback (from thick wallet sites and such) can easily be piled on too.

I don't use cash anymore. Not as safe, not trackable for budgeting purposes, etc.
 
dclive said:
Get an AmEx (free, like from Fidelity) and double all warranties for all products you buy - free.

And get 2% back on all purchases, with no work required on your part. Additional cashback (from thick wallet sites and such) can easily be piled on too.

I don't use cash anymore. Not as safe, not trackable for budgeting purposes, etc.
Click to expand...

I don't use cash either, I use my debit card to ensure that I don't spend more than I have. It is less a discipline thing than it is a sort of general peace of mind thing.
 
My only concern with debit is someone can gain access to your number and empty your account, and the onus is on you to get the money put back into your account. Until you do, your money is literally gone - that's concerning.

With a credit card, the only impact is less credit available (but the bank account is totally safe).


Plus I'm not familiar with warranties with debit cards. Still available?
 
dclive said:
My only concern with debit is someone can gain access to your number and empty your account, and the onus is on you to get the money put back into your account. Until you do, your money is literally gone - that's concerning.

With a credit card, the only impact is less credit available (but the bank account is totally safe).


Plus I'm not familiar with warranties with debit cards. Still available?
Click to expand...

I don't get any fanciness like that on either of my debit cards.

I keep bouncing around the idea of a credit card, I wouldn't mind getting points, cashback or miles just for paying my regular bills.
 
So far the best I found is Fidelity's AmEx with 2% cash back (deposited to your Fidelity account, naturally) on all purchases, bar none. If you can find something better pls tell me. 🙂
 
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