i got a phone call from apple today, which is wasnt able to pick up thankfully at the time, i did a ringback and i found out it was apple care.

well i looked this up on the website, and i saw that the phone service for mac mini support lasts for 90 days and the apple care package protects and supports the mac mino for a total of 3 years.

i had my itunes store set to the us and i looked up how much it cost $159 great i thought about 77 not so, for us its 129. ok so lets assume we are paying for tax, thats about 89 and i did work it out by the way, but its roughly right as i am working from memory. so when she called me back, she told me all the things about apple care, and i said i am interested but can you tell me why apple care is so much more expensive in the uk.

She said hang on ill have to ask my manager so i waited, and she came back and she said that apple support was only about 44 a month, i said thats fine, im not actually saying its expensive im asking why we pay more than the us does. she said hang on a minute my other manager has just come in ill ask him, she was gone for a while and then she came back and said the only thing we can tell you is that the us applecare has been going 8 years and the uk one has only been going 4 years, and we have to employ less people in us that in the uk cos the people are more experienced, i know this isnt really a good excuse and we have no excuse for it but thats the best we can do.

So basically the costs of the uk call centre is being transferred to the customers, because it costs them more to set up here, than in the us!

thanks again apple! for ripping us off, sufficed to say that i didnt take out the extra time, id prefer to hedge my bets a little bit! anyone else have any views on this?

I now have an expert centre nearby me so hopefully i can just go there if i get hardware problems.