So I'm minding my own business at the last MacGroup meeting, testing out Slink on my MacBook, and all of a sudden, the MacBook battery was almost flat. Huh? Well, maybe it was because I was streaming audio from my iMac at home. Nah, couldn't be that, I was only connected for maybe 5 minutes. But something was definitely wrong. In fact, the battery icon in the menu bar was reading Service Battery.
That night I finished draining the battery, went through the routine to reset the power manager, recharged it, and it was showing only 40% capacity. Now granted, it is a 19 month old battery, but was only showing 21 cycles and should have been doing better than that. The next morning I disconnected the power cord, cranked up iTunes, started running a movie (Hellboy II, for the record), and the battery died after 72 minutes. Let the beast sit for 6 hours, reconnected the power cord so it could recharge, green light finally came back on after several hours, and the battery health was down to 38%. Time for a trip to the Apple Store.
On Wednesday I went to the Twelve Oaks store online to make a genius appointment for Thursday. Am I glad I made my appointment the day before. I had a 1:30 appointment, and when I arrived, the place was wall to wall people, and their service list was showing no open appointments for the rest of the day. I was barely through the door when one of the sales reps logged me in to the system. At 1:25, the Apple Genius was running diagnostics on my MacBook, just to be sure it was only the battery, and at 1:35 I was walking out the door with a new battery in place. The battery was well out of warranty, and I fully expected to pay the list $129 for a replacement, but I am happy to say that they only charged me $99, the repair/replacement price. He could just as easily have sold me one of the $129 batteries sitting on the shelf, and I wouldn't have complained, but he didn't.
People wonder why I buy directly from Apple instead of looking for bargains from other retailers. This is why. I have never had a bad experience with any Apple employee. And on questionable repairs/problems, it has been my experience that if you go to them with a positive and friendly attitude, they will do everything possible to keep you happy.
So, thank you Apple. Thank you for good, solid products and a great staff.
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