Need Macbookair help

I talked to Apple service online chat and they couldn’t fix it either. They thought it was the SMC and had me do a bunch of things.

It will only boot up in ‘safe boot’ mode and I can’t get the cursor into the password field properly. It only sometimes will do so with an external keyboard attached.

Anyway, they told me to take it into a service center…

`Went into the service center (pretty fruit loop shop if you ask me – they had their grand parents working there as well!!!) and he took one look at it and without even touching the machine said “Its water damage. That’ll be $110 to run a diagnostic, $450 for the keyboard or up to $1200 to replace everything down to the logic board” – at which point we’d just buy a new machine anyway, as they retail for about $1300 new.

So, took it home without doing anything about it. The laptop *will* login with an external keyboard plugged in and once in everything appears to run just fine. Screen is clear, things open and close, it saves and reopens, apps run… all good. So our immediate idea is to buy a cheapo Logictech wireless keyboard and just use that. Not great, but better than buying a new machine.

BUT…

Apple Care rang back to day with a follow up “How’d it go” call. I expressed my displeasure at the level of service and attitude offered by their registered and approved Apple Service provider which *they* had sent me to.

The girl bounced me up to the next level of Apple Service and he said that if I were prepared to go into a different service provider they recommend and get a formal diagnostic report from them (for free. He was surprised that I didn’t get one from the first mob but I repeated that he didn’t even bother to touch the machine, he just looked at it) then based on that report Apple would be prepared to fix the machine for free!!!

This is assuming it doesn’t need the entire guts of the computer to be replaced. He said that they aren’t prepared to replace the whole machine because its a 2012 model but he did imply that there is a “Plan B” if its something more major but wouldn’t commit to what that is at this point. (I pushed him but to no avail… I’m guessing it would be either a) a replacement but refurbished second hand machine, or b) and new machine offered at a discount price) If its just some stuck key or the keyboard as a whole then they’ll fix it for free.

(Sometimes it’s worth being a slightly disgruntled and mildly irritated customer!! :+) – but not too much because that’ll blow it and they’ll just say ‘stuff you then’.)

So anyway, I’ll take it in to this new service center on Monday and get the diagnostic report and then get back to Apple to see what they say about it all. Stay tuned for Part 4 of the ‘Great Macbook-Air Fixit Saga’!!!

Here’s a thing…

The Macbook’s keyboard now works again after 2 and a bit months!

We were using the external keyboard reasonably happily though some things ran a little glitchy like sound and chrome in general. Then I saw that it wanted an update in the APPS. Just a standard security update…

So I said stuff it. I don’t know if this will run at all or if it will install with all the glitches this thing has but there’s not much to lose. So clicked install

It installed perfectly and completely smoothly and all looked good. So I went to open the browser to surf stuff again and by habit used the onboard keyboard. It wasn’t until I had finished the URL and the site had opened that I realised…. the onboard keyboard had worked perfectly. Upper and lower cases, numbers and special characters… all back to normal!

Now because the bozo in the shop had pulled it apart to look at the keyboard, the spacebar needs a pretty good thump to work but everything else is fine.

So, screw Apple and their clueless technicians. They don’t have a foggiest on what they’re doing. Let them just stick to their helpline script trees and be absolutely no help whatsoever!… bastards