Chosen Solution

I want to repair a Macbook 12 outside of Apple who’s latest repair bill is £580.80 which amounts to another new logic board and labour costs. They refuse to tell what is wrong with the laptop beyond the repair cost for a logic board replacement £1995 repair bill in 3.5 years - 3 new logic boards, 1 new Keyboard Apples own repair history is appalling and it may well be a case that whatever the repair a new logic board will be required in another n months from a new repair date. Repair history: 06-Dec-2016, 2016 Repair Bill: £835.20 Total   Price Item Number Description £212.00 661-02243 Top Case with Keyboard, Space Gray £415.00 661-02249 Logic Board, ETSI, 1.1GHz, 256 GB £ 69.00 S1490LL/A Hardware Repair Labor £139.20 VAT £835.20 Total  

  21-Jan-2019, Repair Bill: £580.80 Total Estimated Pickup Time: 21-Jan-2019 Customer Information Product Information Warranty Status: Out of Warranty (OW) United Kingdom Model: MACBOOK (RETINA, 12-INCH, EARLY 2015) Date of Purchase: 04-Nov-2015     Problem Description/Diagnosis Issue: Customer has come in today due to issue with hard drive, it will intermittently show up. Steps to Reproduce: any other Genius that was taking the appointment did see that he couldn’t see the hard drive when bottom into diagnostics, I took over and did pray reset and ran mri.   MRI passed Cosmetic Condition: Display: display have few marks round the sides and edges of the display, few marks on the back of the display clamshell.   Top case: few marks round the sides of the top case and on the top side of the top case.   Bottom case: multiple marks on the bottom case. Proposed Resolution: Booking in for triage   Run full diagnostics start with ASD OS and EFI Mac OS Version: Unknown Hard Drive Size: 251 Memory Size: 8192   Employee 973589710   Repair Estimate Item Number Description Price Amount Due Customer KBB 661-02249 Logic Board, ETSI, 1.1GHz, 256 GB £ 415.00 £ 415.00   S1490LL/A Hardware Repair Labor £ 69.00 £ 69.00   VAT £ 96.80   Total £ 484.00 £ 580.80    

  03-June-2019 Proposed Resolution: Machine needs MLB - OOW at £580.80 Warranty Status: Out of Warranty (OW)   United Kingdom Model: MACBOOK (RETINA, 12-INCH, EARLY 2015) Date of Purchase: 04-Nov-2015   Issue: Customer states the computer stopped powering on again. SMC or PRAM did not solve the issue. Unable to run diagnostics. Keyboard doesn’t have backlight on.   Steps to Reproduce: Took to minimal systems and trying starting the Mac up with various parts disconnected to try isolate issue but did not ever turn on. MLB is getting power from IO board & Flex as light is appearing after connecting to charge but no further power to turn the machine on.   Proposed Resolution: Machine needs MLB - OOW at £580.80   Unfortunately, machine is outside previous repairs 90 day coverage. Not eligible for consumer law as bought outside EU and not from Apple. Resolution: Customer Declined Reason: Repair Cost

I never spend more then 40-50% of the cost of an equivalent/better used device as a metric. For me, it varies based on the residual value of the device and it’s only counted against the nonstandard parts - if the machine is a total loss, I can reuse that SSD in another system. In some cases it’s not hard to get to the BER threshold, especially on cheap devices where all it takes is a keyboard or keyboard assembly. I’m not blind to margins like 1-5% over (Ex: Part is 52% as much), but I don’t like to leave a lot of room in that sense. The idea is if the parts cost too much, it’s not worth it to go through with the repair a lot of the time due to the cost of a used example that may be better equipped or in better overall condition. For the USB-C MB, deeming it a BER situation is easy because of the lower initial cost and residual resale value vs cost of a new one - when they were still sold new. That said it may not hurt to keep it as a donor device if you buy another one that’s the same, but it may not be worth repairing. Put it up for parts if you never intend to get another one and move to a rMBP for example. At least for me, this would have been totaled out a long time ago with my metric, based on the first out of warranty repair.

Personally i would look for a new device! as mentioned above by another user - these models are renowned for issues! A few notes: A second hard refurb board can be found online from anywhere between $200-400+ , in contrast you can get a second hand Retina MacBook 2015 for around $500-600+ on auction. After looking into the above two options another $800 seems a little steep, i would put that money towards a new device and sell the Macbook as spare and repairs working screen for $200+ on ebay or somewhere similar