Your Mac Isn't Dead Yet
Mac and MacBook repairs in Christchurch
Your Mac has stopped behaving. Maybe the screen stays black. Maybe the fan sounds like a jet taking off from Harewood. Maybe it's just slow enough that you've started making a cup of tea while it thinks about opening Safari.
Here's the bit nobody at the shiny shop tells you: most Macs that get written off are fixable, and usually for a lot less than a new one.
We've been fixing Macs in Christchurch since 1997. MacBooks, MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, iMacs, Mac Minis, and the occasional Mac tower that's been under someone's desk since the Crusaders were winning everything. Here's what actually goes wrong, what it costs, and what to do before you give up on it.
What actually goes wrong with Macs
Macs are well built. They are not magic. After nearly 30 years, here's what we see walk through the door at Selwyn St.
Swollen batteries. The classic. Your trackpad stops clicking properly, or the case starts to bow. That's the battery puffing up underneath. It's also the one fault you shouldn't ignore, so skip to the "try this first" bit below.
Cracked screens and dead backlights. Screen smashed, lines through the display, or the picture is there but you can only see it with a torch. All fixable, all cheaper than you're expecting.
Liquid. Coffee, wine, the grandchild's juice. What kills a Mac after a spill usually isn't the liquid, it's corrosion over the following days. Fast matters here.
Won't turn on. No chime, no light, nothing. Sometimes it's the charger, sometimes the board, sometimes something we can sort in twenty minutes.
Slow, or completely full. Spinning beachball, 11GB free, macOS nagging you about an update it hasn't got room for. Often an easy fix.
Dying drives and missing photos. If it's clicking, buzzing or files have started vanishing, stop using it and bring it in. Every hour it runs is an hour of overwriting what we could have got back.
Updates gone sideways. A macOS update that stalled halfway, an Apple ID you can't get past, or Mail that's decided it no longer knows your password.
No WiFi. Which is sometimes the Mac and sometimes your router. We fix both.
"It's not worth fixing, you may as well get a new one"
You've probably heard that sentence. It's worth asking who's saying it, and what they sell.
A new MacBook Air starts around $1,900. A MacBook Pro will take you well past $3,000. So when someone tells you a four year old Mac isn't worth repairing, the real question is: not worth it compared to what?
We once did a Mac repair for about a fifth of what the customer had been quoted elsewhere. That was an extreme example, we'll be honest. But it's not a rare shape of story. Plenty of "beyond economic repair" Macs are a battery, a screen or a drive away from another three or four good years.
And there's the other thing. A Mac that gets replaced instead of repaired becomes 1.6kg of aluminium and lithium in a landfill. We'd rather fix it. More on why we repair before we replace.
The honest version is this: sometimes it genuinely isn't worth fixing. When that's the case we'll tell you, in plain English, and we won't charge you to carry on pretending otherwise.
How a Mac repair works with us
No mystery, no "we'll call you in a fortnight".
1. Drop it in, or we come to you. Our workshop is at 160b Selwyn St. If you'd rather not move it, an onsite tech can come to your home or office, and a lot of software problems we can sort by remote support without anyone leaving the house.
2. We assess it within three hours. A proper assessment, not a guess. That's $125, and it tells you exactly what's wrong, what it'll cost to fix and how long it'll take.
3. You decide. No work happens until you say go. If you decide not to go ahead, that's completely fine and you've still got a straight answer in writing.
4. Most Macs are back with you inside 24 hours. We stock the major parts, so the common jobs don't wait on a shipment. Our average repair this year has been 10.3 shop hours from drop off to ready. Occasionally a Mac needs a part we don't carry and we'll import it, but that's the exception.
5. It's guaranteed for three months. And if we've genuinely got it wrong, our 120% Repair Guarantee gives you back 120% of the labour. More than you paid us. We've not had to write many of those cheques.
Try this first
Before you ring us, a few things that either fix it or stop it getting worse.
Frozen? Hold the power button for 10 seconds, let it go, then press it again. A proper restart fixes more than people expect.
Still turning on? Back it up now. Plug in an external drive and run Time Machine, or at the very least drag your photos and documents across. Do it today, not when you get a chance. We can set up a backup that looks after itself.
Case bulging, or the trackpad not clicking? That's a swollen battery. Stop using it, unplug it, and don't leave it charging overnight. Bring it in. This is the one Mac fault that's genuinely a safety issue, not just an inconvenience.
Spilled something? Shut it down straight away, unplug it, and turn it upside down like a tent. Don't turn it on to "see if it still works", and please don't put it in rice. Then get it to us quickly, because corrosion is doing its work while you wait.
Drive clicking or files disappearing? Turn it off and leave it off. Every restart reduces what we can recover.
And find your Apple ID password. Write it down before you bring the Mac in. Nine times out of ten we need it, and nine times out of ten nobody can remember it.
Here to help
So before you hand over two or three thousand dollars for a replacement, let us have a look at the one you've got. Worst case, we tell you it's not worth fixing and you'll hear it from someone who has no laptop to sell you that afternoon.
We've looked after more than 11,000 Cantabrians since 1997, from the same corner of Selwyn St, through the earthquakes and everything since. Your Mac will be in good hands.
And yes, we do Mac repairs in quick time. We've been using that one since about 2004 and we're still not sorry.
Here to Help
160b Selwyn St, Christchurch · Mon to Fri, 8.30am to 5.30pm