[andyhmltn]

I'm currently having to go through a home insurance claim for a similar reason. I stupidly took one of the keys off and bent a bit of plastic getting it back on. The damaged part of the key is on the keycap itself, rather than the mechanism underneath. Silly mistake but I imagine not super uncommon.

Took it to an Apple store and was quoted £700 to fix it which is equivalent to almost half the cost of the laptop. For a single key. Absolute insanity.

[ChuckNorris89]

Damn, what a rip-off. Why not stop giving them your money and stop buying any more of their products and services? Hit them where it hurts, their sales and bottom line.

Just complaining about it doesn't get you very far as long as you still keep shoving money in their pocket.

These days there are plenty of quality alternatives that are not Apple and lowering their sales should send a clear message to their board.

[pilsetnieks]

It will send a message but I'm not sure it's clear at all.

I always see the suggestion to vote with your wallet but how does it even work with a product with usable lifecycle of 5 or even 10 years? By the end of 2025 Apple will see a sales slowdown over the past few years. At that point I'm not sure it's even possible to pinpoint specific reasons, like "customer couldn't replace keycap on a 2017 model computer" which may or may not have been solved for years already.

If you have complaints and you want them to be fixed, tell them (https://www.apple.com/feedback/), unless you've given up completely on the company and won't ever return to it. Simply voting with your wallet is the equivalent of ghosting in commerce.

[arkitaip]

It is unfortunate that you are getting downvoted for stating the absolute most sane option. Apple isn't doing anything illegal here, so consumers aren't going to see a change in their behavior. Unless they opt out of Apple's offerings completely.

[jrochkind1]

Some years ago I had the tech at the Apple store replace a single damaged key on my laptop for me completely free, he had a drawer full of keycaps, it took him five minutes, he was just like, no problem, bye.

Times have changed. :(

[HatchedLake721]

It’s not that support has changed, it’s the butterfly keyboard. You can’t replace keys with butterfly keyboard, the whole thing has to.

[plow-tycoon]

That's sort of what I was hoping for in this case. In the past, I've brought my laptop in, and per their discretion they've either honored a repair program or just made a quick fix.

[garblegarble]

>Took it to an Apple store and was quoted £700 to fix it which is equivalent to almost half the cost of the laptop. For a single key. Absolute insanity.

I've had this happen to me, although I argued (successfully) that the keyboard was defective and I was trying to repair a stuck key (this was the previous butterfly mechanism) and they did a replacement under AppleCare.

The tech even told me that replacing keycaps on the butterfly keyboards is extremely challenging, and even they break the keys sometimes.

[kingnothing]

If homeowners insurance in the UK is anything like it is in the US, I'd advise you to cancel the claim and pay for it yourself out of pocket. In the US, if you ever make a homeowners insurance claim, you basically get blacklisted from getting a new policy from any provider anywhere in the country on any home you own for some unknown number of years.

[bluedino]

I had that issue with my 2015 12" MacBook Retina.

I ended up buying a broken keyboard from eBay for $80 and picked the keys off that I wanted, then re-sold it on eBay for $60.

(this was before they announced the keyboard replacement program)

[hadrien01]

What is the 'key' in this context?

[kmm]

The one on a keyboard you type letters with, not the one you open houses with.