apple care worth it?

[The-Real-Deal82]

There is either the Apple limited warranty that is 12 years for most Apple devices or AC+ that is 3 years for Macs and 2 years for most other Apple devices.


Is that guaranteed by consumer protection laws? Unfortunately the most that's usually guaranteed is a single year which is no better than the Apple limited warranty duration. Even in the EU the proposal to extend from 12 to 24 months was shot down due to retailer lobbying. Nobody wants to guarantee modern tech to last even 2 years.

If hardware is failing within 2 years, it can be argued it falls under the sale of goods act. There is clearly a manufacturing defect or poor choice of parts if a £1k+ computer is suffering hardware failures after just 12 months. To my knowledge retailers have not successfully been able to force the law to be changed. Pretty shady too if they did as it suggests these manufacturers do not have faith in their own products and are perhaps cutting corners to make cheap decisions if true.

 

[okkibs]

There is clearly a manufacturing defect or poor choice of parts if a £1k+ computer is suffering hardware failures after just 12 months.

I agree fully with you but retailers often ask for some sort of proof like obtaining certified (expert) advice just so they can avoid taking responsibility since they know nobody goes through the effort (and cost) to obtain that. From what I have heard they don't even have any process in place for the rare occasions where a customer follows through and just hand it over to legal and at that point your only option is to go to court. You might very well win but very few people would consider going down that path. Retailers know that and thus have no incentive to change their ways.

Apple is one of those businesses that handles it this way some of the time. Otherwise if you could just get free repairs after the included 1 year warranty is already expired they couldn't make as much profit with warranty extensions. For example you can extend the warranty for iPhones and iPads from one year to two years, fewer people would do that if they were guaranteed a free repair for manufacturing defects in the second year without paying extra.

To my knowledge retailers have not successfully been able to force the law to be changed.

In the EU it was proposed to extend the previously existing 6 months "no questions asked" period of consumer laws to 2 years but lawmakers were quickly convinced to drop that down from 2 years to 1 year. This was requested by the retail industry as they simply do not wish to warranty the products they freely choose to sell in their own stores for 2 years. Make of that what you will.

Pretty shady too if they did as it suggests these manufacturers do not have faith in their own products

It's about retailers, not about the manufacturers. With Apple you can buy straight from their own store in which case these consumer laws apply to them, but Apple is a notable exception in that they primarily sell directly to customers. Other manufacturers either don't put so much emphasis on it (who else has their own stores all around the world...) or don't sell directly to customers at all.