A couple of weeks ago I dropped off my well-used, out of warranty, never on AppleCare early-2012 macbook pro to get the keyboard replaced. It turned out that th

A couple of weeks ago I dropped off my well-used, out of warranty, never on AppleCare early-2012 macbook pro to get the keyboard replaced. It turned out that this repair would also, by necessity, replace the battery (it is part of the "top case"). ~$380USD, I was happy to pay that considering that my battery was shot and several of my keys no longer worked at all. A few days later I went to pick it up and they told me that they needed to replace the logic board as well because of an original manufacturing defect, and that I was eligible for a "quality program" screen replacement because the laminate was peeling. Also presumably because of the hassle they decided I was to be charged $235 USD instead of the original amount. I tested it out and bam, kernel panic within seconds of booting into the OS. Same thing on reboot. So they replaced the logic board again, same problem. Formatted the drive and installed the OS from a clean image, same problem. They decided that the best course of action was to replace the laptop entirely. So for $235 I got a brand new 2015 macbook pro. Apple's in-store repair, in my experience at least, is fantastic. If something goes wrong they do whatever they can to address the issue. I'd recommend going through them if you're considering changing some of the internals of a macbook pro given how easily it can go wrong.