I was never a big proponent of AppleCare in the past. I never seemed to use it, and it was expensive. I, however, bought my MacPro with AppleCare because I got a good deal on it, and I am glad I did.

This past Sunday, I was minding my own business using Photoshop to do some painting, when out of nowhere the screen displayed a ton of video distortion (pictured above) and the computer locked up hard. I thought this might have just been some sort of fluke, however I was wary that this could be a serious issue after seeing similar symptoms with my boss’s MacPro about 6 months ago. I rebooted hopefully, and things seemed to work, but after 5 minutes, the same symptoms. The culprit? The video card (pictured below); an NVidia GeForce 8800 GT. I’ve had my computer for a little over two years, which would normally put it outside of normal warranty coverage, but since I happen to have AppleCare, I still have a few months of coverage.

Monday afternoon I called 1-800-MYAPPLE. I spoke with a very nice woman who helped me out and said she’d send me a new part. That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Of course I have to send my part in in order to avoid any charges to my credit card. The next day (Today) I was surprised to find a package on my doorstep. Lo-and-behold, Apple had sent the part overnight, and I was able to install it and begin using my computer in less than 24 hours from initially calling them. Now that kind of world-class serviceis what keeps me a happy Apple customer. Thanks!

Bonus link: Check your AppleCare status!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Missives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.