Best Buy & Genius Bar tag team defenseless Macbook :'(

hi Lois I was told by Holger who referenced you to me to send you a message telling you the whole ordeal of how he ended up sending my laptop to you basically I was just using it one day it turned off and wouldn't turn back on I went to the Apple store by Michigan State University because that's what distressed college students first instinct is they then told me my smc was broken it would cost $100 for the part and 400 for labor and if they did that it would wipe the memory off of my laptop even though my laptop was purchased in January 2017 so after that I went to the Best Buy out here and was told that there was nothing they can do because my insurance in the laptop expired on January 23rd 2017 when I actually purchased it On January 28th 2017 I they've called my mom since she was still in our hometown where we purchased the laptop she went to the Best Buy out here and was told there was nothing they can do about it so she went into the Apple store in our hometown as well gave them the diagnostic from the MSU Apple store and the genius went back into the back to call the other Apple store and wouldn't tell her what they talked about on the phone he then came back out told to the only option was the $500 fix but his words were we don't actually know what's wrong with it but we can guarantee we will fix it upon asking him what they were doing that will guarantee the fix they refused to tell us and then just said the exact same thing over and over again so after that we went to the Best Buy once again and we were told by Best Buy to buy a battery from Batteries Plus come back buy a $200 geek squad plan and we'll cover the cost of backing up my laptop and installing the battery it took about a week to get the battery in and when it was finally in we went to the store to pick it up and it wasn't there so after going back and forth with batteries plus they finally figured out what was wrong and got the battery we then took it to Best Buy in a Friday night we're told to make an appointment on Saturday to get the battery put him between noon and 7 p.m. so he decided on 2 p.m. we went back the next day granted I drove 80 miles from Lansing to Grand Rapids to deal with the issue at the Best Buy we bought the computer from and the associates at Best Buy had no idea who we were and what we're talking about after a long heated conversation with the general manager of the Geek Squad we were told that Best Buy doesn't actually fix MacBooks whoever told us that information was straight-up lying to our faces and then we had to return the battery which we apparently over way overpaid for as well after that we had no idea who to go to to get this fixed and as we have no idea what the actual issue of my laptop is finally we contacted Holger drove over to his house and he opened up the computer which Best Buy said they could not do because it was too dangerous and my lithium batteries would explode upon Holger opening up the computer in a matter of seconds and explaining to us why Apple and Best bias so corrupt in their processes of fixing their products he gave us your name and website we watched a couple of your videos and sent a laptop out immediately so let's go over a few things that are troublesome with this story first of all that opening the laptop is dangerous because the lithium-ion battery you can't open it cuz can we second thing second thing is that the SMC is bad and that because the SMC chip over here is bad that must mean that you're gonna lose your data right you're gonna lose all the data even though on this machine if you wish to remove the SSD you can do so just like this so watch this if you want to preserve the data in this computer because you want to swap the board you remove one screw you slide out the SSD you replace the board and then once you have replaced the defective motherboard even if you have no idea to fix this thing at all once you've replaced a defective motherboard you take that SSD you slide it into the new motherboard you put the screw in and the customer retains their data this is not that hard and there is no excuse for any Apple store to say that they cannot preserve customer data when it is there a paring a machine you don't have to copy the data you don't have to deal with a program that images the drive or anything like that you do this do this you take the drive out you put the new board in you plug the solid-state drive into the new board and then you screw it in this is one screw it's not that hard anyway I just turned this into a PC so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna see if we can fix this MacBook Board and see what's wrong with it is it the SMC does it need a new battery did any of these people get it right or not one way to find out let's dig into this machine and see what's going on all right so you've got a MacBook Air in this MacBook Air claims to be dead we're gonna plug it in turn on my power supply here we're gonna see how many amps it grabs and its peers to grab 0.009 which is pretty dead so let's open it up and see why this MacBook happens to be dead according to the ticket it says won't power on no liquid which of course is probably a lie but there's only one way to find out if that's the case all right let's get a good look at this MacBook so we're gonna zoom in and it's a pretty clean looking MacBook all right so we're gonna unplug the flex cable for the keyboard and all this stuff and see if we get any different results maybe we do maybe we don't wouldn't it be great if this MacBook was just a bad trackpad but alas no we still don't get fan spin and we're still only drawing 0.01 let's take a look at this under the microscope and see if could be an idea of why MacBook is dead under the microscope there's no clear-cut obvious reason for why MacBook is dead oh well imagine that I think I can see why MacBook is dead now let's take a look and see what that's for this looks similar to the board that didn't work earlier so I'm going to open up a schematic for an 8 - 0 0 0 165 board and get that on the screen and let's see if Paul Daniels is new software that I update it will work or come you 7501 is going to be used for creating three different power rails it's gonna be used to create PP 5 vs 4 RS 3 what is this AR in the middle of the screen here Paul Daniels what does that say I updated your software I trusted you never updating software again click over to my microscope camera and remove this chip because it seems to be corroded almost as corroded as Paul Daniels's code and his heart Paul Daniels knew that I had working software and he decided to update it to avert to change it so that I wouldn't be able to fix boards anymore so that he would be able to monopolize once he moves to the United States I'm kidding I like Paul Daniels but he always tells me to update software and every time I update software it doesn't work it's it's not just the Paul Daniels thing it's a general thing in life if I have a working version of software I stick with that working version the software all right I can see that most solder joints are melted which means I should be able to do this there's a pad there that's rusted why is that pad rusted and what is that pad for well there's one way to find out by using Paul Daniels this amazing board review software here you can just click and we can see but that pad is for P P 5 V s 5 PP 5 es 5 is totally corroded as a result we're likely not getting PP 5 es 5 and if we're not getting PP 5 es 5 the board's not gonna work and turn on so let's try and fix up that pad and make this a happy little board yeah I'm gonna use my micro pencil my t 30 - KN we're gonna go over all these pads and make them nice again this board's gonna turn on and it's going to be happy fitter more productive all right now let's really zoom in and work on that pad that seems to be corroded updates are usually for a good reason no they're not updates are to break the software so that you have to purchase a support package or a new version updates are a conspiracy never update software all right so we're just gonna scrape until we get a pad because I believe that there's actually a pad under there and I'm gonna prove it to you we're gonna scrape in line with the pad and this is why my T 30 - KN tips typically last a few weeks even though they cost almost $50 here we go we're revealing pad keep scraping we don't want to scrape too hard we just want to scrape hard enough to get rid of all the junk on there and the is gonna help us and the fact that the iron is a little bit of solder on it's gonna help us and at the fact that the iron is boiling hot SCANA help us and you want to make sure we didn't just put solder on top of corrosion so I'm gonna take a little bit of wick and I'm gonna remove the solder just in case just in case we'd pull the nono and put solder on top of corrosion I want to see what it looks like under all that stuff granted you're not supposed to be wicking with a micro pencil which is another reason that these tips usually last me like a week so I'm gonna I'm gonna put on a proper iron for this for wicking time for some pads to get wikked they're gonna remove all the solder that we put on these paths so we put leaded solder over the lead-free solder we went over it enough times that most of the lead-free is probably gone now I'm gonna wick it all away and the reason I'm doing that is because I want to make sure that I didn't just put solder on top of corrosion up there I want to make sure that I actually removed all of the corrosion in the junk that was located near that pad so I do a good amount of scraping much scraping right by that area but gently it's much gentle scraping and I'm satisfied at this point that I've removed all the corrosion from that pad now that pad is fitter happier and more productive not thinking too much regular exercise at the gym fitter happier hitter happier more duck fitter happier more food regular exercise at the gym not thinking too much my bridge and the bottom left will clean itself up in a jiffy oK we've got it centered now we got to push it down so it's in place but a little bit of just a small amount enough to get everything working now I'm gonna start at a left-handed we don't wish that pain on anybody begone ship can Macbook work again Macbook can work again MacBook is fixed so it appears there was corrosion around my 5 and 3 volt regulator IC and we had a corroded pad can were able to fix that corroded pad with a three-step process first we add solder around all the pads in that area then we scrape and then after we're done scraping we use wick to make sure that any solder that we added did not just go on top of dirt once we have a perfectly flat pad surface with no any contaminant crap on it then we can add flux and add new solder to the pads and put a new chip but it's important to not solder a chip on top of corrosion if you solder a chip on top of corrosion and won't work and often if you just add solder on top of corrosion you could be fooling yourself into believing that you've created a contact when in reality there is no good contact if there is resistance at that point the machine will use too much power and you may have random shutdowns or it may not work at all a little trip a current sensing circuit or it'll only work on a non original charger and all sorts of nasty stuff so just make sure you do it right the first time that's it for today and as always I hope you learned something you

Channel: Louis Rossmann

Views: 3,490,062

Rating: 4.9174566 out of 5

Keywords: macbook, logic board repair, genius bar, best buy

Id: MyKp7fiXkws

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Treesten]

I worked at best buy. The reason they couldn't open the macbook is not because of danger but due to Best Buy's agreement with apple. Apple specifically forbids best buy from doing hardware repairs on their products in store. Whoever said that it was due to danger is either dumb or lying.

[u/domlang]

I like the subjects of the videos, but the guy has the charisma of a piece of paper.

[u/WhatDoesThatButtond]

This guy is amazing. Does a lot of heavy lifting with repairs.

The story is from the perspective of an unsavvy customer and was retold that way.

Several lines of bullshit did happen here though.

1. Opening the laptop would cause the batteries to explode.Obviously not true, but was likely said because the process to send out a Macbook is just that. Send it out. Whoever was talking created a bullshit reason instead of telling the truth.
2. SMC chip is bad, so they'll lose their data.This was likely said because anything checked in/sent out has to go with a small contract saying they aren't responsible for your data. So you either go home and back it up yourself, or get them to do it. Either way, they don't want to repair issue A with laptop, only to find out theres an issue B (bad HDD) and then get blamed for it. Big companies like this have to cover their asses.

#2 sounds like a customer getting the two combined in the story. Not that it ultimately matters, but the people in the tale are obviously bad at their jobs.