Macbook Pro & Water & Insurance

[blambert]

Knocked a can of beer over onto my Macbook Pro, f**king nightmare.

I turned it straight off and took the battery out, dried it off and put it upside down like a tent, covered, with a hairdryer blowing hot air into and across the keyboard, turning it into a little oven.

Just turned it back on now... The keyboard is completely messed up and its randomly losing the airport card and requiring a restart to fix. It's crashed twice in the last two hours. I'm using a bluetooth keyboard now, which works. But basically it's fucked.

Can I just call my insurance company and just say 'Look, it's fucked and will require a new keyboard & logic board" or will they want an invoice from Apple to show how how much repairs would be? The next Genius Bar appointment near me is Wednesday! All my work & uni work stuff is done on this computer, I need to get the process going as quickly as possible.

 

[Moz168]

Depends on the policy, have a read of the paperwork.

I split a brew on mine and it wouldnt even turn on, they sent me a voucher to get a new one.

 

[mikekean]

Might sound crazy but try cleaning it through with some clean water and let it dry out again. Ive dropped mobile phones in all sorts before but by giving it a good wash in clean water and a drying it out they usually work fine after.

 

[Moz168]

Its mostly likely that the HD still works though, see if any mates have an enclosure thing so you can transfer everything. Do this before sending it to the insurance company, even if its just for assessment.

 

[BatFastard]

The hairdryer wouldn't have helped you need to let it dry out at room temperature!

 

[jenic]

Mine got wine spilt on it, rang insurance and told them what had happened, they came and picked it up, week later they sent a better spec'd new model mb through the post

 

[Don]

Its mostly likely that the HD still works though, see if any mates have an enclosure thing so you can transfer everything. Do this before sending it to the insurance company, even if its just for assessment.

I don't know what connection the MBPs use, but if its IDE or SATA, try this
http://www.usbnow.co.uk/Hard_Drive_Enclosures-IDE_&_SATA_Cable_Kits/c10_70/index.html
Connect to another machine via USB and see if your work is still readable before doing anything further (for now).

 

[Jason_E]

My mate melted his macbook keys when he hairdryered them! LOL So you're lucky you didn't do that. Backup everything and ring insurance.

 

[Benson]

Seems Macbooks aren't very rugged all round.

 

[jenic]

what did you do to get it like that? :S

 

[Revels]

It's not his. It's a girl that went through customs, bomb suspected and they shot it.

 

[nickthegun]

Im an Apple Field Engineer for a Apple Authorised Service Provider. My minion sees quite a few of these in the workshop.

Basically, we charge 80 quid to strip the machine apart, assess the damage and write up an insurance report that 99% of insurers accept without question (because we are apple vetted). Generally after a bad water spill, we usually quote for every part the water has touched regardless of if it works or not as its not a matter of if but when it will fail. The 80 quid fee gets written into the insurance report and the client generally gets the fee back.

Recently we did a quote of nearly 1500 quid for an old style macbook that had been left out in the rain. We quoted for everything down to the cables and 3 hours labour.

The insurance company generally shell out like for like if the quote is high enough, so a macbook will be replaced with a new macbook and a 15" powerbook will be replaced with a 15" MacBook Pro.

The exception was one insurance company (cant remember who it was) replaced like for like in *spec*. The client had a macbook and got some crappy acer netbook as a replacement as it had the same processor speed, RAM etc.

But, yeah, we get loads of liquid spills. 9/10 are women spilling booze on them and the other one is usually a toddler creating havoc.

 

[jenic]

ced with a new macbook and a 15" powerbook will be replaced with a 15" MacBook Pro.

The exception was one insurance company (cant remember who it was) replaced like for like in *spec*. The client had a macbook and got some crappy acer netbook as a replacement as it had the same processor speed, RAM etc.

LOL and what about all the customers software....

I'm sure a stern conversation to the insurance company would get the client a mb replacement

 

[ChrisH]

I think my first and last argument would be, how is Mac OS to Windows like for like? lol

 

[gregor182]

who would you reccommend for decent macbook insurance? ive have far too many close calls recently.

 

[jenic]

who would you reccommend for decent macbook insurance? ive have far too many close calls recently.

Probably cheaper to add accidental to the house insurance and stick the mb on the high value items list.

Think we have to declare single items worth over £1k on ours, doesn't affect the premium though.