TheRaven64's Journal: Apple Discontinues Mail-in Repairs in the UK

Apple have quietly discontinued their mail-in repair service in the UK. While the terms of the AppleCare agreement still state that they offer it, and on-site repair in some cases, they have closed their repair centre and are telling customers to take their machines to the nearest authorised service centre. These are few and far between in the UK; for a lot of people the nearest one is several hours away.

Ping Wales have the full story. From the article:

A straw poll of businesses in Wales which use Macs reveals that no business customers have been informed of the change to the repair service.

Apparently customers were not the only ones kept in the dark over this:

Apple resellers in the region told Ping Wales that they hadn't been informed of the change either, adding that this did explain why the number of repairs coming in had increased significantly over the last few weeks.

And then what?

[ryanr]

So at work, we had one of our Minis die. We wanted to send it in, but they advised us to take it to the Apple store. While the location isn't a problem, getting anyone to take it is. You have to have an "expert" look at it (presumably they will confirm the deadness) before they will take it. Problem is, when I've taken it in at lunch, all the experts are already booked for the rest of the day. And I don't have all day to stand around to see if a cancellation opens.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

I have a co-located mini. About a week before the warranty was meant to expire, the hard drive died. The co-lo company took it in for repair, and were told that it didn't exist; the serial number was not on file. They pointed to the machine and said 'look, it does exist,' but Apple refused to pay for it. Instead, they got a third party replacement disk, and covered the cost out of their own pockets (and thus earned my continued custom for the foreseeable future). I am continually amazed by the low stan