obv different era, but one of the training videos they showed us, a guy stood on a ladder and dropped a 2016 MacBook from the top of a ten foot ladder. Then picked up the same MacBook and flipped it over the head. Single take, booted it up, totally fine. Took the same Mac, placed a pen in the middle of the keyboard, shut the display reasonably hard, and yeah man. Display was toast. THAT model even had a "notorious" issue where the display inverter would die out if you slammed the screen down to many times over the years, and geez, one of the trickiest repairs to do right, but the vast majority you'd put the computer on the bench and scratch your head for a second on how the thing had lasted that long to begin with.

I want to know what kind of horrible condition this guy's machine is actually in. $850 sounds like something that would get quoted for obvious accidental damage. Like massive corner dent on the casing. If the laptop was in good condition (scuffing even major, totally ok, but a major dent, hell nah), they would or should have given him the option for a flat rate depot repair which would have been in the range of ~$300 inclusive of parts used. Flat out replacing the screen? Yeah that's an $800+ part my man, but the mail in repair option was there to say, "hey man, yeah, this super sucks, your mlb (~$500) or your display (~$800) is totally toast, let's do this flat rate thing and they'll replace both for you, or heck, every damn part inside this thing for ya. ~$300 flat, ya chill with that?" If it was a "repair extension program" issue, heck, even when they stripped the techs from being able to tap a button and override it themselves, even when it was a model that was serially out of range for the program, typically a manger would step up and give you the override code to make it happen. And if the first manager was being a tight ass, you just just found another manager that would. The sitch reeks of two things. Either he came in and was a total POS about it, and/or, his computer looks like he tossed it in a dryer and let it bounce around for 30 minutes.