Choosing the Wrong MacBook Repairer

When your MacBook won’t power up or misbehaves—who you choose to fix it matters. Here’s why choosing wisely can save you money, data and frustration.

 

A MacBook owner takes her dead computer to Apple [told in fairy tale style] and then to a high street computer shop

1. APPLE

I hear this story from my customers every single working day. It goes something like this [and has a happy ending]:

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a princess pressed the power button of her Macbook to find it wouldn’t start. She called Apple and they told her to try some combined keystrokes [that never fix anything but make them look like they’re helping] and told her to visit their big white castle to have an appointment with a genius [for a sales opportunity – 0h sorry I meant a diagnosis]. 

She made the long trip to Apple’s big white castle spending 3 hours of her precious time that she will never get back. Behind the big door of their kingdom they popped the back off her Macbook and secretly looked for evidence of dried up liquid so that they could point at it and say the Apple warranty does not cover liquid damage.

The genius [using their 2 weeks of training] decreed that she must have the logic board replaced as it is unrepairable [by them]. But it is a very expensive one because she paid extra gold coins for large data storage when she bought it and must now pay for it a second time because it can’t be removed from the wet slimy logic board.

“But what about my data?” she cried.

“It’s gone, it’s gone!” they lied.

Shocked by Apple’s repair quote (80% the cost of a new one) the princess ran out of the store, kissed a frog and lived happily ever after.

The End.

p.s. If she hadn’t decided to escape from Apple the old logic board would have been taken to the dungeon where they grind it up so that it can’t ever be repaired and the big white factory in China would make another logic board to make another load of profit and send another 300kg of greenhouse gases into the sky to make big holes in the ozone layer and make everyone sick while Apple tells everyone it cares for the environment. 

 

Enough of the fairy tales!

I suspect, if you have read this far, that you realize that Apple is the villain in that fairy tale. Who thought the princess was anything but nice? You’re sick!

So in my opinion Apple tries to inflate the cost of repair. They say things like “the logic board must be replaced”. In most cases this is simply not true and how would they know as 20 minutes is not enough time to remove the logic board and inspect it. They are just declaring they know the fault is on the logic board and since they don’t have the required skills to repair it they would have to replace it. I repair more than 95% of logic boards that come to me and nearly all of them have had liquid damage. I’m sure Apple staff are trained to tell you it’s worse than it is to convince you to buy a new Macbook instead. Probably why they insist on you visiting the store?

Apple authorized repair centres are really extensions of Apple they still have to follow Apples rules (no repairing of customers logic boards) and have to buy spares from Apple at ridiculous prices.

The visit to Apple did no real harm except to waste her time.

Following is the big mistake …. she believed a shop could help her …

2. COMPUTER, PHONE & VAPE SHOP [definitely not specialists]:

WARNING: Although this type of shop might be capable of replacing screens and batteries with really cheap items you should never take a dead Macbook there – they will most likely damage your MacBook further and make it extremely difficult to repair with one fault hiding another.

Here is a detailed example from a customer who had left her MacBook with a high street Computer, Phone & Vape Shop and was told they had failed in their attempt to fix it and still charged her a modest fee!

Eventually she brought the Macbook to UK Mac Repair.  We like to help but my heart sank when the customer handed me her MacBook and a tiny bag containing two CD3217 chips that the high street shop had replaced. I inspected the Macbook and was shocked to find that both new CD3217s had been soldered flush to the board with no room for neatly spaced solder balls. Flush to the board makes bad connections or shorts very likely.

It was immediately obvious to me that whoever installed the chips on this board did not know what they were doing and very likely burned out the tracks within the logic board just as soon as they connected the power. I bet they saw smoke! If any one of the 96 conductors within the layered board is broken the Macbook will not start and repair of a track within the board is either very time consuming or impossible.

The owners decision to have a non-specialist shop try to repair a MacBook sealed the fate of this logic board. I could only offer this customer a replacement Apple logic board which, luckily for her, I could still provide for half the cost of one from Apple.