I am writing this review from a laptop I thought would never see the light of day again. I am a happy camper.
One day I decided it would be a good idea to balance a full mug of tea on my 13' Macbook Pro while I carried it to the couch. I sat down quite hard with said tea STILL SITTING ON MY LAPTOP (next to the track pad), splashing about 1oz. of tea onto the keyboard.
This will long be remembered as one of the most bone-headed things I have ever done.
I wiped it down, turned it off, and put it upside down in a bag of rice for a couple of days, fingers crossed. Like an idiot, I got impatient and tried turning it on a few days later, and got a mysterious question mark on the screen accompanied by a furious clicking noise. I turned it off and tried turning it back on. This time, nothing happened at all.
The soonest the Yorkdale Apple store had an appointment at the genius bar was three days from them. I put the laptop back in the rice.
When I brought it into Yorkdale, although I had a really lovely tech, was given pretty brutal news. Tea water had gotten into pretty much everything. I had broken the logic board, one speaker, track pad, keyboard, and hard drive. They estimated the cost of repairs to be $1100-1200. I hung my head and left, put the poor thing in a box and cut my losses. (I also had an iMac, so could make do until I could afford to buy a new one.)
I had always had the intention of trying out an after-market repair facility, just to see what they said, but found the idea of them a little shady. I waited over two months before I started googling a couple of reviews. I came across yelp and decided that based on the overwhelmingly satisfied customers, and very genuine seeming stories, that I would give irepair a go. I was not very optimistic, and was mostly doing this to put the final nail in the coffin and move on.
I brought my laptop into the College location, and was told it would be a $30 diagnostic fee, that would be applied to any repairs if I chose to have them done. (Apple's is $50, but didn't charge me due to my extreme sadness/politeness.) He put a piece of painters tape on my laptop with my name and number, and told me someone would get back to me the next day. As I brought it in on a Friday evening, I waited until Monday to follow up when I didn't hear anything over the weekend.
When I called I was told it was sent to the Yonge location, as they took care of all the computer repairs. I was given their number, and told to call. I spoke with another receptionist, who let me know a tech would call me in the next day or so. At this point I was a little nervous, as my 'someone would let me know the next day' had turned into a week, but based on the amount of damage I had done to my computer, I figured they were honestly still looking it at. That day, I received a call from Phil who completely set my mind at ease. He is so friendly and funny, our discussion about the computer felt more like chatting with a friend. He let me know he was about 80% done testing it, but at this point was estimating the repair cost to be about $350 as long as he didn't find anything else wrong. I nearly choked. He said he completely understood it was a lot of money, and seemed very sorry. I laughed. I was giddy. I couldn't believe the assessment so I started drilling him, asking exactly what was checked, what was wrong ECT. He told me the logic board was damaged, but that it was repairable. He let me know Apple does not usually repair logic boards, which could account for the high replacement cost. He said that the hard drive was fine, and that they are not usually damaged by water. He let me know even if the next few things he had to check had damage, I would not be looking at more than $450. I was elated.
I got a final assessment the next day, and was told that the keyboard needed to be replaced, but everything else was ok. The total would be, as he quoted the day before, $450. I asked about a couple of upgrades to my hard drive/memory, which he walked me through as well. I decided not to go with them right away, but plan to in the future. I was told it would be ready friday or tuesday after the long weekend. I didn't hear back from them after the weekend, so called in the next Friday to find out everything was good for pick-up. (I would advise future customers to follow up within a reasonable amount of time, and not just wait for a call. If I had needed it back right away I would probably have been pretty anxious with the lack of communication, but as I didn't, this particular aspect of the service didn't bother me.)
I went to pick it up and received the same great customer service; we tested the speakers, (apple told me one was non-functional) and found they both worked great. Everything was alive and well on my desktop as I left it and I was ecstatic. I paid, was told to come in or call if I had any issues and left. Amazing experience, couldn't recommend it more! read more