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Comment by wild_preference | Hacker News Reader

I bought my 2017 MBP last November and accumulated a whopping 7 loose keycaps that would come off with my fingers as I typed. It was so unusable that I had to use my 2013 Air to get work done.

I returned to the States 2 weeks ago and took my MBP into an Apple store. The one nice thing I can say was that I was able to book an appointment online, drop my MBP off at the store, and 2 days later my repaired laptop arrived at my front door. That experience was at least more pleasant than I expected.

The high resale value of macbooks doesn’t do you any good when you realize you should keep your previous laptop around because your new one will likely break.

I will definitely be using an external keyboard when possible from now on. Sheesh.

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I don't see how that is a pleasant experience. Other manufacturers of laptops in that price range will give you 3 years on-site support where they will send out a technician to replace as much as possible in front of you so you can keep working. Often they will even be able to replace the logic board within half an hour.

Hell, my Thinkpad T420 had complete manufacturer created instructions on how to replace the display and keyboard so I could to it myself after the warranty runs out.

“Other manufacturers have onsite repair” who does that nowadays and how accessible are their stores?

I’ve had friends with HP, Dell, etc, laptops ship them off and wait a week to hear what is wrong and give them an estimate. And they usually had to ship it themselves. I had an Apple repair and it took less than a week with virtual no wait right by my house.

Say what you will about their keyboard problems but people were envious of my repair experience.

> “Other manufacturers have onsite repair” who does that nowadays and how accessible are their stores?

At least Lenovo offers that in some of their models, you may be charged extra, though, if you want onsite warranty, may depend on market. This summer my space bar started to misbehave, created a ticket on Lenovo site, next day a guy arrived to my home and spend about half an hour to disassemble my laptop and replace the keyboard.

No, I am not envious on your repair experience.

Heads up Lenovo lets you take it to any of the certified independent repair shops for warranty work. I've had numerous things done under warranty, and I have a couple repair shops to choose from in Seattle!

I had a very poor experience with a Lenovo-authorized repair shop in Victoria, Canada who replaced the display on my then-brand new T420 when it failed but somehow managed to force the bottom case back together in a way that left 2-3 mm gaps at various spots and cracked the plastic in a few places.

Lenovo refused to replace it.

In my experience you have to buy the business class laptops for that level of service. You pay a bit more but the models are sturdier and the service is usually great. There aren’t “stores”, they just come to your business/house/wherever you are and repair it on the spot. On the rare occasion they don’t have the right part and you have to wait a couple more hours.

>In my experience you have to buy the business class laptops

And these laptops are still cheaper than Apples.

I had a defective keyboard in my XPS 13 9333, many of the keys just straight up didn't register - I called Dell and two days later I had a tech in my dining room tearing the laptop apart and replacing the keyboard. No, I didn't have ProSupport or anything on it - this was the included one year warranty.

It depends on how much you pay for the laptop. If you get the overpriced “enterprise” machines you get the on site support. I found it cheaper to just have extra hardware on hand.

I recently got a 2017 MBP for work, and yeah, whenever I have to type on it for more than a few minutes, I am reaching for my external keyboard. I bought a larger backpack and a separate USB-C hub just so I can carry my keyboard around with the laptop, because it is so inefficient and annoying to type on this thing.

Prior to this, I haven't seriously used an MBP since my '07-ish MBP died, but I can say there were no such issues with that.

And these experience are only and mainly in US, Mac user can try to the same in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, or any part of South East Asia, I beg they don't even come close.

In any cases sometimes they put you through to Australia or Singapore representative, but my god they treat you like dirt.

And the funny thing is? They continue to buy from Apple because they cant be bothered to leave the ecosystem and their work depends on it.

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