Apple uses water damaged boards in Apple refurbished devices

We discovered evidence of Apple Authorised Service Providers using water damaged boards in Apple refurbished devices sometime back. We withheld from publishing our findings sooner. We were not sure if the board that was replaced on our customer’s Mac was repaired and supplied by the Apple Authorised Service Provider in Singapore or it is a company practice adopted by Apple in general. It appears that it is a company practice that Apple adopts for devices sent in for repairs and refurbished products that may be put on sale.

We discovered this issue after a NUS student sent in her Macbook Pro Retina 2014 to us. After our diagnosis, we determined that it may be due to a video issue. We advised her to pursue the issue with Apple Singapore to see if they could escalate her issue to the Mac specialist for a free replacement. Her Mac was just out of warranty for about a few months and there were other users with Macbook Pro 15″ with similar video issues. She managed to secure a free logicboard replacement, which to her dismay, failed again after 6 months.

She brought her Macbook to us for a diagnosis again after having a bad experience with the Apple Authorised Service Provider. We were appalled to see water stains – signs of water damage on the board. Apple eventually refused to replace the board as her Mac was repaired for free and does there is no extended warranty.

This issue has been confirmed by Dr Jessa Bethany Jones. She has relationships with people from the famous iFixit company and is a trusted repairer in the independent repair community. Her video detailing what she discovered is shown below.

We feel the need to blog about this as the general public feel that only Apple is ‘qualified’ to repair Apple products. Besides introducing proprietary pentalobe screws to prevent casual users from opening up their iPhones, Apple even tried to prevent independent home button replacements from being performed by locking down iPhones.

Their reasoning is that paying a premium for repairs done by them will ensure that the parts that are replaced will be brand new original parts. This signals to people the impression that that replacements done at Apple will be superior to those repaired at your local quality independent repair shop.

As shown in our findings and the video, this might not always be true. Independent repair shops can be more professional than Apple Authorised Service Providers. Consumers deserve the right to know what they are getting. Unfortunately the right to repair bill has failed in New York, so premiums for repairs done at Apple is here to stay.

In the meantime, do contact us for quality reliable Mac repair needs. We are able to perform component level repairs so that expensive logicboard replacements are not necessary in most cases. We will never replace your logicboard with a water damaged board that has been repaired. Replacement logicboards from us are either brand new or used but have not been repaired in any way.