I have the 3yr apple care thing so.
They said it was covered under their "battery replacement scheme"
I got to the store, and he said there was nothing written in the case notes saying it was covered! He didn't even want to see the separates case ID Applecare gave me for the battery! he said that "expansion was normal" HAH, my battery had pretty much burst out of the plastic casing, and you could see inside the bag and all of the insides of the battery, it was making the laptop raise at least an inch or two off the desk!
The employee at the Liverpool One Apple store was quite rude. I had another issue a few months back with the logic board, when it came back there was a big white blob on the screen where they obviously has damaged it in repair, so i was also getting that fixed this time. He said you could "barely notice it, just looks like the background" and when I pulled him up on this, saying that for a £1500 machine, it isn't a small thing, he suddenly said "oh, what I meant was i can tell it wasn't accidentally done by you........." yeah right.
Anyway, the lid had also warped on the left hand side upwards due to the terrible design of the catch being in the middle, so I am getting a new battery, and a new clamshell (Screen + Lid) so those issues will be gone.
What also annoyed me was that he obviously noticed that the WSAD keys had rubbed away a bit, the silver paint was wearing down (Purchased sept 2007!) and he didn't offer to swap them out, when I called applecare they said that he should have some spare keys in store, which they would give me for free to swap out the worn keys.....he did not mention this at all in store.
The Apple store in Manchester could not have been better, they made me become a loyal Apple customer, but the store in Liverpool was terrible service.
He also seemed to be very suspicious of how I got 10.5.8 on my machine, sayi8ng that it WOULD have come with tiger, and did I purchase the upgrade and all these questions, obviously thinking I had downloaded it illegally, where as in fact I was given a FREE upgrade by the MANCHESTER STORE.
They said it will take "7-14 days" which I find amazing. To order, and replace a battery, and clamshell it seems like a long waiting time. The apple store in Manchester had my logicboard replaced & done within the week.
If you do not have applecare, you SHOULD call them, and say what happened. For two years worth of use this is NOT normal and especially the early 17" MBPs are well known for this problem. I wouldn't doubt that if you kept at it, you could get it replaced on them.
Message was edited by: oronare1
