We do not buy liquid damaged MacBooks. Here is why, and what to do instead.
This page used to price the spill. It now declines it, and saying so here is fairer than saying it after the courier has already been.
R0 million+ already paid out by Epic Deals
Liquid is not an event, it is a process. A drop breaks one component and stops. Liquid gets under the keyboard, into the board and along the ribbon cables, sits where no clean reaches it, and corrodes on a timeline of months. The machine that works perfectly today is very often the one that dies in six weeks, and nothing we can test on arrival tells the two apart.
We bought and resold these for years and carried the failures ourselves. The honest problem is that the risk cannot be priced fairly. Any price low enough to cover the machines that die is unfair to the ones that would have been fine, and we are not willing to quote a figure we would want to withdraw after testing.
So the calculator now says so the moment you tick the box, rather than at the end. If your Mac has had liquid in it, we cannot make you an offer, and we would rather you knew that in ten seconds than in ten days.
Check these first.
Do not switch it on to check
If it is recent, power it down, do not charge it, and leave it somewhere dry and warm, ideally opened and face down. Putting current through a wet board is what turns a Mac that could have been saved into one that cannot, and every attempt makes that likelier.
Rice does nothing
The most persistent bad advice in computing. It draws no meaningful moisture out of a sealed machine and it introduces starch and dust into the ports. Time, warmth and leaving it switched off are what genuinely help.
A board repair is your better option
An ultrasonic clean, done soon after the spill, saves a fair number of machines, and an independent board-level repairer is worth a quote while the corrosion is young. It is worth much less six months from now, which is the honest argument for doing it this week rather than deciding later.
If you are not sure it ever got wet
Sugary drinks leave residue that keeps drawing moisture long after the machine is dry, so a coffee or juice spill years ago still counts. If nothing was ever spilled and the Mac simply will not start, that is a different problem, and one we do buy.
What counts as liquid damage.
Any one of these means we have to decline, including the Mac that dried out and has been faultless since. The liquid contact indicators inside turn red permanently, we check them, and they do not care how well it is running today.
- Spilled on, whatever it was
- Worked afterwards, then failed weeks later
- Keys stopped working after a spill
- Trackpad clicking oddly since
- Speakers crackling or muted since
- Marks or shadows behind the display glass
- Charging intermittently since it got wet
- Liquid contact indicator already red
Questions, answered honestly
Something else wrong with it?
Never had a spill? Then it is still worth money.
Dead, cracked or simply old. See what yours is worth in a minute.
WhatsApp: 072 130 4462 | Phone: 010 900 3363 | Mon–Fri, 9am–5pm