Michael says his virtual life was shattered when his out-of-warranty MacBook crapped out, but he lucked into a free replacement at a San Diego Apple Store, where he took his computer and knelt at the altar, hoping for a miracle.

Turns out the trick was just to get the Apple Store employee to take pity on him. Michael writes:

My heart sank. I didn’t have the money to replace a hard-drive. He asked what I’d like to do, and I told him I really didn’t have any other option than to just wait until I could afford it. I’m not really sure if he could see something in my countenance, but he held up his finger and told me to wait for a moment. He walked into the back for a few minutes, then came out and told me that he’d just go ahead and “pretend” I had the warranty on my computer, and replace it for free, and even told me he would replace the crack in the keyboard that I got months previous from setting it down a little bit too hard.

I stared at him for a minute, and asked why he was going to do it all for free for me. His reply:

“You look like you’ve had a sh*tty day, so, I figured I’d try and help out.”

I gave him my broken laptop, and a couple hours later, it was returned to my possession, 100% functional. Sure, I had to get all my programs back again, but honestly I was just happy to have gotten it fixed for free. Jason pretty much saved my ass. All this entire experience did for me was reinforce my loyalty to Apple. He didn’t have to fix it for me, he could have just turned me away because I didn’t have a way to pay, but he didn’t.

Has this tactic ever worked for you?

And here I thought Macs NEVER broke… [10 Cents Worth]

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