You buy insurance to protect from natural disasters and liability lawsuits. It seems only natural to buy AppleCare to protect against costly damages to your MacBooks.
However, what happens when AppleCare doesn’t cover it? Despite how the name sounds, AppleCare doesn’t cover everything.
In fact, coverage is fairly limited. While it’s still great to have, you should also have a backup plan in place for when you’re no longer covered.
Know AppleCare’s Limitations
The great thing about AppleCare is the fine print isn’t so fine. Still, many people assume the extended warranty provides full coverage for corporate MacBook damages.
The basic AppleCare+ plan for Mac is just $249 per MacBook. When you consider the full value of the MacBook, that doesn’t seem like too much. However, the only things covered completely for free are hardware failures that occur as a result of a defect. When it’s damage caused by accident or by an employee, you’ll still have to pay a fee for repairs or a replacement.
When you purchase up to three years of protection, your MacBook is covered for up to two incidents during that time period. Any external enclosure or screen damages cost $99 per incident. Other types of damage cost $299 per incident.
Enterprise coverage only covers up to 2% of all covered Macs in your business, at least for on-site repair and replacements. This still leaves you on the hook for the other 98%.
Any damages that occur after the 2% or two incident period is reached are the full responsibility of your business. Since the business issues the MacBooks, employees aren’t held responsible. You could easily pay hundreds just to repair a cracked screen.
Prevent Damage
In light of those limitations, AppleCare sounds like it should be more of the backup plan versus your main protective strategy. The best idea is to prevent damage versus trying to repair it after it happens. This is where protective cases like the Hexpact case come into play. They’re designed to protect against damage when a MacBook is dropped or banged against something.
When corporate MacBooks are transported to meetings, cars, cross-country business trips and more, damage is almost inevitable. The only question is how bad the damage will be. You could wait and pay an addition $99 to $299 for repairs and still potentially lose valuable data if the hard drive is ruined or pay around $50 for a protective case that prevents the damage from occurring.
You may think just backing up your data is enough of a backup plan, but consider the fact that backups don’t always work. Plus, a damaged MacBook may not have been backed up recently enough. Backups and AppleCare are a great compliment to a protective case. Why have to worry about the stress of fixing a broken MacBook when you could just prevent it?
Check Your Business Insurance Policy
It’s important to check your business’s insurance policies to determine if accidental damage is covered. Depending on how the damage occurred, your insurer may pay for part or all of the damages. However, most business policies only cover damage if it occurs as a result of a natural disaster or random power surge. Liability policies do cover against damage that may happen if one of your employees damages someone else’s MacBook.
There are specialty laptop, MacBook and computer policies that some insurers now offer. It’s important to read all the fine print. Once again, you may find similar limitations to AppleCare. You might also discover that certain types of damage, such as water damage, isn’t covered. Be careful about who repairs your MacBooks as Apple does not cover damages after an unauthorized third party has worked on the device.
Damaged corporate MacBooks are a guarantee, but full coverage by AppleCare isn’t. See how our Hexpact case helps protect your MacBook without any extra fees or fine print.