TBD on Ning

Macbook Pro meet bottled water....ARGH!

I just got an email from my daughter who is teaching in South Korea. A co-teacher left a bottle of water on the desk that they share and, you guessed it, the water spilled into her laptop. She has a Macbook Pro, I am still paying for, I have no idea what she has on it other than what it came with. In any event, she took it home and put it into an obviously large bag of rice, the keyboard was not working at all at first. Now, she says that the only keys that seem to be affected are the: "It's only the f, r, and 4 keys that do weird things. If I hit them, a slash comes up right after, and if I hit shift and then one of them, this line does: |" It is not covered with Applecare but she can take it to an Apple store on Friday, she has to use the computer to teach so she can't let it go during the week. Do you have any idea what I can advise her other than to take it to Apple? I feel sick to my stomach and I know she does as well. She is 14 hours ahead of here time wise so it's night time there and she often does not respond to me immediately but I thought I would run this one by all of you and see if you had any suggestions.

I have to go to work in a little while so I might not get back on here until tonight.

Thanks for anything you can possibly suggest.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Pete48 on January 29, 2013 at 6:07am

Elle....

I looked over all the posts in this thread, and could not find whether or not the MBPro is still under the Applecare warranty. If it is, then her repair will be, probably, 100% covered.

Squiggly lines on a screen are not good. It could be what's called an "inverter" that sits behind the screen and does whatever magic an inverter does. It's possible that water may have damaged internal wire harness(es) that send info to the inverter so that it can correctly display stuff on the screen.

Without Applecare, I'm estimating the cost might be really high - like $700+, especially if she has to replace things like the internal harddrive and/or some other parts.

Plan for the worst and hope for the best....

Pete

Permalink Reply by ellevan on January 29, 2013 at 6:26am

Oh, Jesus. She does not think it will be covered by Applecare because of the water incident. I am almost afraid to tell her this but I guess I may as well get it over with, at least she is in Korea so I won't have to HEAR her reaction.

She does have Applecare because we bought it when we got the computer. I talked to someone at the law school where I work and he also taught in Korea for a year and had a problem with his computer. When he took it to have it repaired, they said the warranty was only good in the US so he had to pay for it, it wasn't Apple though, it was Dell.

I will keep you posted on what she finds out.

Hope your day is starting off better than mine.

Permalink Reply by Pete48 on January 29, 2013 at 9:59am

Elle.....

Many times (not always, but many times) Apple will take care of even a damaged MacBook Pro for free. It's good customer relations for them.

If you bought it in the US and it's being used in a foreign nation, that shouldn't make any difference for the vast majority of MacBook owners (there are issues with Italy and Apple violating some Italian laws, but that's for anoother posting thread!)

If your daughter is appropriately penitent, and explains that someone else dropped a glass of water on the laptop, she might (maybe, perhaps) be astonished when the Apple employee tells her that it'll be repaired for free. It's happened before when people drop their iPhone in the toilet! But an iPhone is only 1/10th the price of a MBPro.

Cross your fingers and think good thoughts!

Pete

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on January 29, 2013 at 10:14am

and be sure the apple people are told she is a teacher and uses it for the classroom..apple has a longstanding commitment to education and is generally good to schools and teachers

Permalink Reply by ellevan on January 29, 2013 at 3:29pm

I just got home from work, I haven't heard anything from her since this morning. I copied and pasted all of your responses and I am hoping that she will let me know what is happening. Since it is about 6:30PM here, it is 8:30AM there so I am not sure if she has done anything. I think the place was probably closed when it was morning here and I got the first email. She is a very personable young lady and she has a smile that would melt the polar ice caps so I suspect she will do everything that she can to persuade them to take pity on her.

I will keep you posted when I hear something.

Thanks, everyone. It's been a really long day.

Permalink Reply by ellevan on February 5, 2013 at 5:56am

Update from my daughter...she took the computer to the Apple Store and said the clerk spoke no English so it was a real struggle, he had to send the computer out but this morning she got a call:

Good news! I can pick up my computer tomorrow and there's no charge!! Apple care means it's under warranty so it's free!

I could not be more pleased, hope the rest of the day goes this well.

Thanks everyone.

Permalink Reply by Pete48 on February 5, 2013 at 7:23am

Elle....

YeeeeHAAAAAAAAA!

I'm so glad for you and your daughter that it worked out.

Pete