How AppleCare Saved Me $1,711 (+tax)

This weekend Apple replaced my computer. They were unable to repair it, so they replaced it. And they didn’t replace it with a refurbished computer of the same two-year-old model, they replaced it with a brand-new current model. The computer they were replacing was a top-of-the-line “late-2009” i7 iMac (Quad-core 2.8GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 512M Radeon 4850) from two years ago, and the replacement is a top-of-the-line “mid-2011” i7 iMac (Quad-core 3.4 Ghz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 1GB Radeon 6970).

This is a fantastic policy that is far more generous than I would have expected, and by itself it makes the AppleCare worth it. I paid about $180 for the AppleCare policy and it provided me what amounts to about over $1,500 net-cost upgrade. I checked on Gazelle and they would have paid me $688 for my old iMac (yes, I could probably get more on Craigslist, but for argument’s sake let’s just use this number) and Apple sells my new model online for $2,399 +tax. That’s a difference of $1,711 (+tax). As I said, I spent $180 on the AppleCare policy. I could do that nine times and still be ahead.

There are definitely some things that Apple does that are mind-numbingly, unfathomably, stupid (including many of the ways they handled this repair incident), but overall I am very happy with the results. I paid for an extended warranty, which I normally don’t do, and they took very good care of me. In fact, they did much better than I would have expected, and even better than I would have hoped for in the best of scenarios.

I’ve not always recommended AppleCare. In fact, I’ve even laughed at myself for buying it in the past. I’ve only justified it because I depend on my computers so much and didn’t want to be faced with a costly repair at a time when I may have not had much cash on hand. But with this result I can honestly say that, where other vendor’s extended warranty policies may not, AppleCare makes economic sense.

From this perspective, it seems an extraordinary value.

–Bill Weinman, October 2011