[matclayton]

I had the exact opposite experience, I went in to a store with a MacBook Pro (2013) which had morphed by a good 1-2cm's due to the battery expanding over the course of the previous hour. They refused to take it and insisted I book a genius appointment for the following week.

After much insisting (30-40minutes) they finally agreed to take the battery and keep it in their safe for a week, until the first available genius appointment was available. There they said it was out of warranty as its a disposable part and therefore not covered by the AppleCare+ plan I had at the time. Genuinely it was the worst experience I've had in an apple store to date.

[CalChris]

You might have countered with I understand it isn't covered by AppleCare. I suppose we'll found out if it's covered by Apple liability.

[pc86]

But then we couldn't have snarky internet posts about how terrible Apple is!

[koolba]

True but we'd get snarky internet posts about the cleverness of their in-house legal defense team.

[JBReefer]

"most valuable company on Earth sues man whose testicles they burned off" is about the worst PR possible

[eddieroger]

It's unfortunate that this was the experience you had. I imagine whomever you talked to was under the impression that hardware can't be taken that isn't accepted as part of a Genius Bar appointment, and didn't know the severity of what could happen would the battery fail. A training failure on Apple's part. That said, my cousin took a similar era MacBook to the Apple Store for swelling, and was able to see a Genius that afternoon and got a battery swap.

[acomjean]

Back in the day, I had a removable white polycarb macbook battery swell. Brought it in and they gave me a quick swap (no charge). I was pretty happy. I wonder how much the extra work dealing with internal batteries cost a company.

[mnm1]

But the battery is covered (had it swapped out on the retina mbpro (2013) and mb air (2012)). That's one of the main reasons to get Applecare. You can at least swap out the battery once for free before the three years is up. I even forgot to tell them and they did it for me anyway. Sounds like they were just shirking their responsibilities in your case.

[hehheh]

You drove around with a battery swollen by 1-2 cm? I'm equally shocked that the Apple store didn't evacuate the area when you brought the laptop to their counter. That is some serious swelling.

[nicolas_t]

I have found that it really seems to vary by country. In Japan, my mbp's battery was covered when it needed to be replaced after 2 years and an half but in China they told me that it wasn't covered.