Retina Macbook Pro Repairs – Now expedited service included!

Hello everyone –

Since purchasing Mission Repair earlier this year, I have been working to bring new repairs, quicker repairs, and a overall high level of customer service without raising prices. I’m excited to bring you quicker turn around times on all Retina Macbook Pro and Macbook Air LCD repairs. We now offer 72 hour turn around once we have received the computer.

 

Partnering with world class suppliers makes all the difference – from parts, repairs, and highly technical repairs (such as the Retina LCD replacement) – allows Mission Repair to bring you added services with no additional cost. Should the unthinkable happen, come by one of our two locations, or box up your computer and ship it in to our Lenexa location.

Thank you again for all your support!

Jeff

Remember – don’t get your MacBook wet!

Good morning,

Water and electronics don’t mix – I’ve talked about it before but I want to discuss a few points again. Is your MacBook waterproof? Not a chance.

It’s more common than you might think; but we receive items in for repair on a daily basis that show signs of liquid damage and without doubt if you get your iPhone wet, you’re bound to see problems unless it is addressed.

My guess is that some of these customers don’t even know that they had a liquid spill or had any contact with water/soda/coffee whatsoever. Sometimes is the unknowing fault of a child or household pet that inadvertently spills or “leaks” onto a keyboard.

For example, here’s a logic board that came out of a 2014 MacBook Pro with Retina Screen; and the device was not displaying video.

If you look closely, and I know that it’s hard to tell; but can you see that chip that is on the logic board that says “Apple 2010”? (It’s actually upside down) It’s about dead center in the picture…there is an IC that is on top of it with slightly green corrosion that is growing from some sort of liquid that got onto the board.

I know, the picture doesn’t do it much justice, and I even almost missed it. For scale, that component just below it is the headphone jack port, which is very small in itself…this was a minute amount of corrosion on the MacBook Pro Logic Board that was causing a major amount of problems!

So I cleaned it up and guess what? Video displayed back on the screen again. This would have been a $680 repair had this customer went directly to Apple…but it was just took me one hour of labor to complete it. The customer makes out and Mission Repair saves the day.

We offer a full-line of liquid damage repairs; but to be realistic, not all of these are repairable. If your MacBook was sitting at the bottom of the lake for week, it’s probably not repairable. But if you spill a cup of coffee on the keyboard of your computer; turn it off quickly and give us a call. We will do our best to save your day too!

Take care, Ryan

 

I walked into my Mission store and saw this:

Hello there friends,

I made a surprise visit to my Mission location yesterday..unannounced…and found my guys watching cartoons!  Yeah, you may know it.  It was “He-Man” from the 1980’s!

Just as I was getting close to letting my team hear an earful, I calmly asked “why is He-Man running on this customer’s MacBook?”  I’m a fair guy.  I don’t mind the employees listening to music while they work, or even tune the radio to AM to listen to a Royals games now and again.  But watching cartoons while you’re on the clock?  It ain’t happening.  I was looking for the ring leader.

Carl stepped up and said “It’s me.”  Mmmm boy, here we go!

“Ryan, this customer was having issues with Youtube shutting down randomly, and I’ve pinpointed it to the RAM in this unit.  I diagnosed it, tried it myself after I was able to duplicate the issue, and now it appears to be solved.  I’m now running the first long video that I could find, and He-Man was it.”  He goes on to say “It’s been running for a long time, but this is a 10-hour marathon and I wanted to make sure that our customer didn’t have the same issue after I repaired the computer.”

Well then.  I grabbed a large piece of humble pie and took a bite.  Those guys weren’t messing around.  They were testing a repair.  GREAT!

That means apparently I do condone cartoons while we’re on the clock.  As long as you tell me it’s for “testing” purposes, that’s all I need to hear!

Bonus points…what was He-Man’s tag line?  “I HAVE THE POWER!”  I can personally remember that opening sequence of the cartoon, apparently it’s a keeper in my mental files.

So rest knowing that if you bring your MacBook Pro in for repair: we may watch some cartoons on it.  But it’s for a good cause, and this customer was thrilled that we did.  It’s a highly technical operation, but someone has to do it 😉

Take care, Ryan

 

 

Football season has arrived!

Hello everyone, it appears that we are in for some real fun this week as the the NFL season starts tomorrow!  I can’t believe that another week is in the books and we’re heading into a great game with the Steelers and the Patriots tomorrow evening.

I know, it still seems early to me, but the NFL preseason games are over! This is an awesome time of the year for us because we have a good group of football fans at Mission Repair, and I usually sneak out with a few employees for some tailgating here in Kansas City, Denver, and we’ve even travelled to California to see a game or two.

Dandra sees these weekends as “the days that we get to eat cheese dip”, but I like to think that I’m more of a true football fan than her. Don’t get me wrong, I love cheese dip…as long as it comes with some professional hits, runs, tackles and touchdowns.  And some chips 😉

To all of those that are in fantasy leagues: Best of luck. I needed to stop playing fantasy football for two reasons:

1. I was distracted by the fantasy play. It took me away from the games that I really wanted to watch and I was focusing on the wrong parts of what was really important to me.
2. I never won 😉

So I’m back in “couch potato” mode on Sundays for a while…unless of course I need to be at the office to help repair the stacks of laptops we have in the repair queue. I better assist tomorrow through Saturday…I need this Sunday off!

Good luck, and happy NFL 2015!

Ryan

The Truth about MacBook Air Screens.

Good evening friends,

It’s late Friday night, I’m just finishing up my day at Mission Repair (working from home) and disaster struck my Apple notebook.

I personally use a 13″ MacBook Air at home. It’s been a great machine that hasn’t given me a bit of trouble until I made a mistake. It’s a mistake that even this late at night I feel that I need to share with my blog followers – a mistake that will prove to be costly. I grabbed my laptop by the screen to pick it up like I’ve done a many times before.

I picked it up by the top of the computer where the screen is, not by the bottom of the computer where the keyboard is. MISTAKE.

I’m going to stop writing and take a picture…you’ll see the beginning of this blog in the background, and everything will look normal as so:

You can click on these pictures to get a close up look at what is going on.

But after I picked it up by the screen in the very spot that you see my thumb and hand, I squeezed a little too hard. Now when I apply just a slight bit of pressure to the bezel where my thumb is located, my image goes haywire:

What you see here is a classic “broken LCD” on a MacBook Air. There are many degrees of “broken”. In fact, when someone has a broken LCD screen, it might physically appear cracked. It might looks like and “ink” stain running across the screen. Or it might in fact be like my situation where I can get the screen just into the correct position, not touch it and have it appear fine – but the slightest movement can show it’s ugly side.

I know that lifting a laptop by it’s screen is not the correct way to handle a laptop. The MacBook Air is so light and easy to carry at some point I made the decision that it would be OK to do so.

I did a quick search on Apple Discussion Forums and found a nice article on Considerations for a long life of your MacBook Air which give good advice on many maintenance and daily life considerations when owning one of these devices, but does not discuss “lifting” the unit by the lid. I guess that’s just common sense that I didn’t use.

In this day and age with tablets in and amongst my life it might just be a subconscious thing- I grab my tablet by the screen, right? Isn’t a tablet merely a laptop computer “lid” without a hardware keyboard? Well, this comparison of the two might be OK if only considering the physical aspects of the devices but they are truly two different devices…however somewhere in my mind it just felt OK to grab the screen of my computer.

My advice is…don’t do it. We constantly repair MacBook Air screens at Mission Repair. I’m lucky that I can just take my computer into my shop, buy a screen for myself and install it. This is not so easy to do for consumers that don’t own an electronics repair shop and I understand this – it’s why Mission Repair is in business.

Do your best to avoid the situation that I’m in unless you don’t mind paying for your computer to get repaired- but if you do, you know who to call. Shameless reminder: 866-638-8402. I’ll be taking mine into the tech lab tomorrow.

Have a great weekend everyone, take care.

Ryan