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Comment by vetinari | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I currently own both Apple laptop (MBP13) and Lenovo laptop (T430s).

When my previous Thinkpad T400 needed servicing - a line of bad pixels developed on the display - the display was replaced by the next business day, for free (under warranty). The kicker is, that I didn't buy the NBD service and I didn't need to prove anything about the date of purchase or something - I forgot to bring my proof of purchase and the service center looked up everything they needed in their system.

I can't expect anything approaching level of service for the Apple laptop. In my country, we don't have Apple Store and Genius bar, and in the past it took the authorised repair center cca 3 weeks to do anything, including simple swapping faulty power supply. Not because they are lazy (they are great guys actually), but because they have to wait for spares.

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That would have been completely possible had he still been under the manufacturer's warranty, as yours seems to have been. The issue here was the he was outside the standard warranty but still within the extended warranty that he hadn't registered. There's no way for Apple (or any company) to know that you bought an extended warranty from a third-party unless you notify them/register it with them. That's the crux of the issue here. If you have an Apple warranty, you can even take it to a third-party authorized Apple center and they can fix it. Their current systems allow them to have parts on order within 12 hours and they don't have to hang on to your machine, if it works (which it would for a battery issue), in order to get something that takes longer to order.

> That would have been completely possible had he still been under the manufacturer's warranty, as yours seems to have been.

Yes, mine has been under warranty. It is important to note however, that this Thinkpad came with 3 years warranty as a standard. (Looks like they scaled that down to 2 years since then).

> Their current systems allow them to have parts on order within 12 hours and they don't have to hang on to your machine,

I assume this is US-specific thing. As I wrote, I was always waiting for weeks for the spares to arrive (once for HDD and twice for power supply). There is only third party service center - only 8 out of 28 EU countries have Apple Stores - and they are not allowed to stock spares. They also have to send the swapped parts back to mothership.

Proximity to a particular repair shop is obviously a factor, that's fair.

Where I'm at I can be at an Apple store talking to a tech within 30 minutes. For a major problem, I can be walking out of the store with a brand new laptop within an hour. Apple does all the same stuff with your registration, as long as you bother to register it, unlike the author.

Getting a PC fixed, on the other hand, it's pretty much going to the retail store where you bought it (which has a tech team that's barely qualified to install anti-virus software) or calling up the company and finding some mom-n-pop repair shop that services their warranty repairs.

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