When your new MacBook keyboard inevitably breaks, you can take it to an Apple Store to get it fixed…or, now, you can take it to any Best Buy location, thanks to a new partnership Apple announced today with the electronics retailer.
Best Buy's Geek Squad doesn't have the most sparkling of reputations—you probably know someone who's had a terrible experience at one point or another—but Apple assures us that every Best Buy location now has "Apple-certified technicians" that can even offer same-day iPhone repairs.
With this expansion, Apple says that there are now "three times as many locations as three years ago, meaning eight out of ten Apple customers will be within 20 minutes of an authorized service provider." Considering that most rural areas don't have an Apple Store or even a third-party authorized service provider within a reasonable driving distance (there are zero Apple Stores in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming), this is ultimately good news.
Obviously, we wish that every reputable repair shop on the map could be authorized by Apple to repair broken devices, with access to genuine Apple parts, but at least the company is making a decent effort to expand its footprint when it comes to authorized repair locations. And of course, there's always the do-it-yourself route if you want to take matters into your own hands.
We still have questions about this partnership, though. Namely, what repairs qualify for same-day service? And what kind of repairs will (and won't) they be allowed to perform? Even at Apple Stores, there are many iPhone repairs (speaker replacements, logic board issues, etc.) that require sending the device off to a distant Apple repair center, and we can't imagine it'll be any different at Best Buy.
That said, this is still a step in the right direction, but we'll be holding our judgment until we see the quality of service they actually provide.
Image by Mike Mozart/Flickr
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