MacBook Air Fingerprint Id

following on from another post, my MacBook Air was 13 months old and started to overheat and the battery drained really fast. I took it to an Apple store where it was diagnosed as faulty. The store were really helpful, but said it had to be sent off for further analysis. The result of which was I was told that the Fingerprint hardware was faulty and the cost was £500 to fix. Because the warranty was for 1 year and I had owned the device for 13 months, I would have to pay. Is there a way to turn it off? As I would rather login than pay half the price again for a 1 year and 1 month old laptop just for the convenience of fingerprint recognition.