50 out @58

I suppose Apple is taking a page out of W’s shock and awe strategy, but ran it through the Apple PR machine and rebranded it surprise & delight. I have an aging MacBook Pro which has had battery troubles for some time. If you unplugged the power cord, the battery, otherwise displaying 100% charge, would within minutes crap out and the machine was down.

After 18+ months of inaction on my part, and soon after the machine went to my wife as a hand-me-down, she took initiative and confirmed that the Extended Care was still valid, and then booked a date with a genius.

The short story is that she got a new battery.

The full story is that the genius tested the battery, determined that it had simply lost its ability to keep a charge, which happens after 300 or so cycles or less if you don’t let it fully drain. So in effect, it was up to us to spend ~150 bucks on a new battery as the issue surfaced from normal use.

Except that instead, the genius—independently, it seems, without having to escalate for managerial approval—decided to surprise and delight my wife by giving her a new battery anyway. He just decided to throw us a bone. I bone I’m still chewing, several days after the fact.

A snapshot of the support ticket.

You’d be right to call out the fact that the battery was a bit of a lemon, having degraded to the point of unusability after only about a 100 recharges, and that hell yeah Apple should replace the battery. But the fine print suggests that they don’t have to. But they did anyway.

Compare this against my experience with TD Insurance.