Chipping away at the AppleCare investment

If I remember correctly, it cost be approximately $300 to buy the full-on monkeys-and-organ grinders AppleCare protection plan for my MacBook Pro. I dislike spending money, but I was well aware that if my laptop didn’t break at some point in the next three years, I should probably start playing golf in thunderstorms.

Unlike my friend Ethan’s recent experience with Apple customer service, my call today went smoothly enough. I followed his advice on getting good tech support (we talked about lunch breaks), and I don’t know if he did anything particular for me, but it ended up being a no-hassle call.

For the past week or so my laptop has been randomly shutting down at 40%-20% battery levels. Not a “need power” warning—just shutting down. He had be bring up some panel of information and apparently some of the numbers for my battery are…incorrect.

So they’re shipping me a new, $120 battery for free. I drop the old one in the box and send it back.

$180 to go…