Why Get AppleCare?
Ok, so you've decided to buy your new Apple gadget, and the specialist keeps going on about how great AppleCare is and that you must have it. Should you get it? Isn't is some kind of goofy warrantee that all of the "talking heads" on TV keep telling you to avoid like grim death?
In a word, no. And here's why. It's not just added time on a warrantee from Apple, but it's access to some of the best telephone tech support you're ever going to get. JD Powers keeps rating them 10% higher than any other companys tech support, so they MUST be doing something right. And I know they do a good job because we would deal with them all the time when they didn't know what to tell a customer. At least they KNEW when they didn't know what to tell someone. So they came to us, the experts, to fix the problem.
But what do you get? Why should you get it if the product is good? Well, first things first. You get a 1 year Limited Warrantee with 90 days of free telephone tech support from Apple with EVERY SERIALIZED PRODUCT they make. It doesn't cover accidental damage, so if your teenage daughter sits on the computer and breaks the screen, Apple won't fix it for free. And, by the way, most laptop screens cost HALF of the retail price. So if you bought a $1999 MacBook Pro 15inch, you're going to look at a replacement cost of almost $1000. With AppleCare, if that screen dies or has enough dead pixels (say something over 5-10), the repair is covered. If the hard drive dies, or the motherboard fails, it's covered. But you've always heard that Apple products are really well made. Well, yes, that's true. But with any consumer product, the more that are made the more likely there will be a greater percentage that will have problems. And with so many Windows users buying more and more Macs, we're seeing more problems.
So how does it work? If you buy AppleCare when you get your Apple goodie, you'll be automatically enrolled because they'll ask you if you want it. When you agree to AppleCare at that point, the serial number is automatically added to the plan and sent to Apple. If you buy AppleCare AFTER the sale, you'll have to go to the Apple support site to enroll. Just follow the instructions and it will run you through the process of getting enrolled. A lot of people when they buy an Apple product think that because they've got a year to get AppleCare, they'll get it later. Please, get it when you get the product. It's so much simpler that way. You'll never need to try and get it with one day left on your warrantee, and you'll ALWAYS be covered. It's so much easier, you'll thank me later.
But everyone says you should never get warrantees and that Apple products rarely breakdown. Well I can't speak for refrigerators or TVs, but I worked for Apple Retail for 5 years and I ALWAYS got AppleCare on everything I got from Apple. Did I need to use it? Only once and it came in handy because it would have cost me a lot to fix it (Flat panel display died on me).
What do you need to do to prove you've got it when you get to the Apple Store, you're asking? Nothing. No need to bring along the box it came with, no paperwork. The agreement is linked to your products serial number (so AppleCare is ONLY for serialized products like computers, iPods and iPhones), not to you. And that's a big plus. If you sell or give the product to someone else, the protection transfers to them and you don't have to do anything. So if you sell your 1-2 year old MacBook to some guy in Newark, he'll have a year of warrantee AND telephone tech support with the computer. Talk about added value.