You'd think it would have occurred to somebody that a keyboard or battery could be damaged independently of the logic board, that either would cost considerably less to replace than the logic board, and that provision should be made for the possibility.
They've always been pretty general with regard to "repair tier". I don't remember the exact format but it was something like
tier 1: accessories (mouse, ext keyboard, power adapter, minor removable cosmetic parts)
tier 2: trackpad, internal speakers, wifi card (two or more, -> tier 3)
tier 3: frame/top case, hdd, dc-in board, battery (two or more -> tier 4)
tier 4: logic board, lcd panel
something like that, you get the idea. For a mail-in, cost is determined by tier, not by specific parts used or labor worked. If we send it in for a bad CD rom drive and it turns out to be a bad logic board, they often will put the repair on hold and re-quote us so we can get approval from the customer. The nice thing about mail-ins is they always come back completely fixed, often fixing parts that we didn't know were bad or didn't consider needing replacement. For that reason we always warned the customer that apple MAY replace the hard drive, (and there's NOTHING we can do to prevent it) so either have your data backed up or we will do a backup (and restore if needed) as a service prior to mail-in. This got a lot simpler with the advent of Time Machine. And I did see maybe 15-20 laptops come back from say an abuse liquid spill or drop mail-in with the hard drive and battery also replaced. (in those cases, the abuse (tier 4) mail-in cost was significantly lower than the NRET replacement of the display panel or logic board, so the mail-in made more sense) (we capped our mark-up on parts at $100 and had a flat $100 markup on mail-ins, so $750 MLB + $100 + labor, or $400 + $100 (+$30 for backup, maybe another $30 for restore) for mail-in, kind of a no-brainer)
Part of the cost is the actual cost of the physical hardware. Part is the labor involved in replacement. And sometimes a major factor is "is this part a critical piece in assembling a new computer from parts?" Apple puts ample consideration into making sure there will never be a significant source of macintoshes assembled from parts taken from scrapped machines. (I've actually gotten one once... MoaT sold me a mac pro that had impossible specs, the CPUs it came with weren't an available option with the motherboard it came with... which had no SN burned into it, so they mixed a new replacement motherboard with used procs from a compatible model)
So Apple will hyper-inflate the core return cost on a critical part even if it's not actually that expensive. That's why you see logic boards that are $225 for a swap or $650 for no-swap sale. (and "abused" computers are NOT eligible for swapping of parts, which is what makes "abuse repair" so expensive) They do this to prevent people from buying the parts to assemble a mac from scratch. Just make the sum of the parts cost twice as much as the final product and you've closed that market.
It gets
really silly with significant cosmetic parts like frames. Where the price of the part is like $75 exchange or $250 buy. And you
know they're just throwing it away when they get it back because it's a cosmetic part, that's made of bonded composites that can't even be easily separated for recycling. They're doing it to keep that used frame out of circulation so someone doesn't buy it and glue the broken bit and use it as part of the mac he's assembling from bits. Look at the rear housing on an iMac. Okay there's a chunky bit of aluminum you can probably recycle there, but they're getting what, $2 for the AL out of it maybe? It's got a lot of attention to detail in the design and cost to manufacture, acid wash etc, so the $75'ish it costs in exchange makes sense as the actual purchase price. But look at the purchase price of $250 or so. When they're getting at most a few dollars out of it when you send the dented one back. (that there's ZERO chance they will be able to "refurbish" and resell, being a cosmetic part that customers expect to look
perfect) (logic boards OTOH, those WILL get sent to foxconn or someone else to be fixed and be put back in the service parts exchange pool, and a big part of them wanting that particular thing back is they NEED it because they're only making so many spare logic boards for a given model, which can cause quite a parts-flow problem if they have a logic board that has a high failure rate like the nvidia chips awhile back, which caused the NRET price to DOUBLE because they
really wanted the bad board back)
