An Apple Macbook owner’s decision to get a second opinion when her laptop stopped working has saved her $1300.
Auckland woman Sandra Roberts’ MacBook Air suddenly stopped working in May this year.
“Went to turn it on and just nothing,” she said.
She took it into Noel Leeming in Silverdale, where she had bought it new, less than 12 months earlier.
But she got a shock when its Apple authorised service provider ServicePlus quoted her $1822 to fix it – over $100 more than her MacBook was worth in the first place.
“They quoted me things that made it sound like it was a catastrophic meltdown, but I couldn’t think how that could possibly have happened, because one day it was working perfectly fine and the next day it wasn’t.”
The MacBook audio board, an audio board flex cable, the top case with keyboard, a Touch ID Button and the display screen were all considered faulty and put down to a ‘liquid spill’ – caused by the customer.
Roberts said she couldn’t recall any accidents of any kind. “It just stopped working.”
Because Roberts was being blamed for causing the fault, Noel Leeming wouldn’t cover repair costs under Apple’s 12 month warranty.
So she queried the quote with ServicePlus, and asked whether she needed to spend money on all of the quoted repairs to turn the computer on.
“I just want it to be going again. And he said ‘yes, you need to have all those things fixed for it to be working again’.”
She asked for her laptop back and took it to an independent repairer in the hope her data could be recovered.
But the repairer did more than that – they figured out why the MacBook wasn’t turning on. In their opinion, liquid wasn’t to blame.
Instead, they found there was a problem with two faulty capacitors, tiny units which help control the electrical flow to the main circuit board.
The repairer, who wanted to remain anonymous, told Fair Go how MacBooks switch from five volts to 20 volts when they’re working correctly.
“Sandra’s one was only going at five volts which indicated to me there was an issue with the motherboard.”
By soldering on two new capacitors, Roberts’ MacBook returned to a normal voltage and started back up again.
Roberts paid that repairer $491
“It was less than a third of the cost of what ServicePlus was actually quoting and it’s working perfectly fine,” she said.
ServicePlus took a photo at the time as evidence of liquid damaged parts.
It said the residue appeared to be dry, as if it had been there for some time.
But the third party repairer questioned the diagnosed water damage, explaining it could have been affected by moisture, rather than something more severe.
In his opinion, that would at worst cause an intermittent issue with the audio, “but the MacBook wasn’t switching on and that was completely unrelated to that”.
ServicePlus acknowledged it could have been ‘more specific’ with its choice of wording.
Managing director Sam Williams told Fair Go it “possibly would have been clearer to state that the parts were ‘affected’ by liquid and that there is potential for ‘future failure’ if the parts are not replaced”.
Williams said ‘liquid incursion’ could be preferable terminology to ‘liquid spill’ as they did not know how the liquid entered the machine.
But he believed their technician found more than just condensation and warned that liquid incursion was a “serious situation” on electronic devices and could develop issues over time.
“ServicePlus seeks to complete repairs to a fully functional and reliable state to ensure that the customer continues to have their full entitlements post repair. Leaving liquid residue in a device after repair is not good practice.”
ServicePlus stood by its assessment that the liquid damage it found could have caused the device to not power on.
But it acknowledged that the information provided by Fair Go “appears to indicate that the Main PCB may have also had an issue that we did not report”.
Noel Leeming said it takes customer concerns seriously and is happy to discuss options around quoted repairs.
It is sticking by ServicePlus’ findings, but as a gesture of goodwill, has offered to give Roberts a brand new MacBook Air.
