Hey all!
I was actually the apple expert at my local bestbuy for about two years. I no longer work there as a better job opportunity came up working for a school as an IT person. However, I do have some good recommendations for applecare vs blacktie protection.
First off, the Black-tie does indeed cover batteries. For some people, that made it worth it right off the bat. I had a fair share of customers come back at the end of their black-tie just to use the battery replacement program so that they would have one for the next few years. Second, accidental damage is covered by bestbuy, however, (and this is a huge however) it is up to their discretion whether or not the computer was being used under normal use when the accident happened. If they decide that the computer was being used in a non-normal fashion, they will not only refuse to fix/replace it, they will cancel your blacktie all-together. This happened a startling number of times to my customers. About half of those times, I was able to talk the geeksquad into fixing it, but with the others, they left with a broken macbook/imac/whatever.
There are some drawbacks to the blacktie protection (other than the accidental damage discretion). If you are a world traveler (outside of the US/countries where there is a bestbuy), you are out of luck with replacement/repair. You can sometimes talk them into allowing you to ship it to the nearest bestbuy, but YOU are responsible for shipping. This can get into the hundreds of dollars sometimes. The biggest drawback, (in my opinion) is that most geeksquad members don't know jack about apple computers. More often than not, if a person brought a mac in to be worked on, I ended up doing the diagnostics/repair because the geeksquad guys wouldn't even touch it. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want someone who doesn't know anything about macs repairing mine!
One other positive for blacktie is that if you never use the blacktie (not even once), you will get triple what you paid for it back in Bestbuy rewards points. Some people forget about this and never use it, but it's a nice perk if you never have to use blacktie.
Overall, I've had a much better experience with applecare and 75% of the time, I recommended that to my customers over blacktie. The times I recommended blacktie was with customers who said they travel often around the US or take their computers into "accidental" situations or those who have small children. Sometimes, people just wanted a trustworthy face to deal with if their mac had trouble (meaning me, my supervisor, a couple of my mac-savvy co-workers). In those cases, it worked out very well for the customer.
Make your choice either way. My choice would be applecare, but in the end, it's really a matter of what you feel most comfortable with. Try to get a feel for your local geeksquad guys. If they are knowledgeable and friendly (also, be friendly to them! That made the difference in their discretion often) then the blacktie might be a good option.
Hope that helps!
Trent out
