Spalpeen

I discovered before I sent my MacBook in for repair the other day that when the battery isn’t plugged in, the CPU automatically clocks down to 1GHz. So for the past week I had it, it’s been operating at half speed. I wondered why it was so slow.

It’s still out for repair at the moment, and it definitely won’t be back before I go home tomorrow. Bummer. Lets see if I can get the repairpeople to send it back to me.

I’ve recently requested an Apple replacement for my battery (read more about my ongoing MacBook problems here) and I discovered an interesting fact whilst doing so.

The Apple representative I spoke to said that Apple would charge me £71.00 if I did not pack up the old, broken battery — which wouldn’t take charge after I got an AC adaptor replacement — and send it back to them (which I will be doing). I had to give them credit card details to this end.

Interestingly, a quick trip to the Apple Store UK shows that a new, 13-inch white MacBook battery is £99.00. So technically, by opening a “fake” repair request, you can save £28 (~$60) on a new MacBook battery. If you were feeling particularly brave, you could send your old MacBook battery back and swap it for a new, factory fresh one at no extra charge: although admittedly Apple might spot that it is in fact not broken, and charge you the money anyway.

Yeah, so this is very likely to constitute fraud, but Apple has seriously screwed me over with a complete lemon of a MacBook (the customer service rep refused to replace the MacBook, despite it having a total of 11 components replaced in 6 months), so I wouldn’t feel particularly bad if they lost some of their bottom-end with a few owners of worn out batteries playing dumb and saving a bit of cash.