2016 Macbook Service Battery warning

Unless you purchased AppleCare, you are most likely out of warranty. I would recommend speaking with someone at Apple before making any decisions. Typically they charge you for out of warranty battery failures, but depending on the situation, they might night. Never hurts to see what they say. Contact Apple Support

burpootus wrote:

Took it to the Genius Bar today. They verified it needs a battery. No negotiation, full price battery replacement for $299 is all that is offered. So, they made profit selling me a Lemon, and then want to profit from selling me the Lemon part again. I'll run it as long as it lasts. No more Apple products for me.

Where is this? It should be $199 in the United States.

I remember I had an issue with my 2007 white polycarbonate MacBook battery. Back then the user-replaceable battery was $129 retail. When I brought it in I had a weird issue where it was variously going in and out of "replace now" warnings reporting negative battery capacity (something like -159 mAh) to going back into "normal" and reporting several thousand mAh - all with maybe 29 cycles reported. I got a Genius Bar appointment and the employee ran a special diagnostic check on an iPod through the USB port. I was told I had the option to get a "service replacement" battery that came in a brown box for $99 or a retail battery that came in a nice box with photos for $129. I think Amazon also sold the retail version for $119. With the service replacement I had to return my old battery. But they didn't have it in stock and I just used it for a couple of more years until it started swelling.

When it started swelling I still only had less than 100 cycles on it. I brought it in and with the obvious swelling they didn't even check the diagnostics and sold me a "service replacement" battery for $99.

I'm kind of surprised that they don't have anything like this any more. However, the most I'd expect is that maybe there would be a small discount should the battery be showing such wear early.

burpootus wrote:

This was in Huntsville, Alabama. I too had seen the $199 cost on the web prior to my visit. They can't replace a 12" MacBook battery in-store, I was told it had to be sent to the service center. So actually looking at the battery was not done.

It's supposed to be $199 plus tax. Maybe added shipping to your home/business if it has to be sent to a central facility. No way should it be $299, even if they have to send it out. Did you you mention the published battery service cost?

I guess another appointment in Birmingham or Nashville/Franklin is probably too far away to just see if they give you another answer? I'm kind of lucky that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and literally have a dozen Apple Stores within 25 miles of where I live. The biggest problem now is that appointment times are scarce since so many people want to replace their iPhone batteries.

This is something you probably don't want to do yourself. The battery is glued to the case and is made up of six different sections with connectors between them. You'll need adhesive remover, and it needs to be carefully applied.

Retina MacBook 2016 Teardown - iFixit

There is an Apple authorized service center in Huntsville. They should be able to do it for the $199 price.

http://www.machsv.com/service-repair/

I was thinking maybe Best Buy, but their only store in Alabama that is authorized for Apple service is in Tuscaloosa.