Ramit Sethi spilled coffee on a $1,300 MacBook and recovered $1,100 through three moves: selling the damaged laptop on eBay for $661, filing a credit card purchase-protection claim for $530, and negotiating parts buybacks. He ended up about $200 out of pocket.
About $1,200–$1,300.
$661.
About $530.
About $300.
About $200.
Hey guys, it's Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach youh Be Rich. Alright, today I have an amazing story about how I made a really stupid mistake that would have cost me a lot of money. But fortunately, through some luck and by being a huge weirdo, I was able to mitigate that. And actually it wasn't too bad at all. In fact, I saved about 1300 bucks. Alright, so check it out. Here's what happened. I bought my first Mac, okay? A 13 inch beautiful MacBook. It was about 12 or $1,300. My first Mac ever. And I was totally excited. Sitting in a coffee shop about three days later, it's like my brand new baby. And I take a big glass of coffee and accidentally spill it. Not just a small cup, a huge cup totally upside down all over the keyboard. It goes inside and I'm freaking out. So the first thing I do, I dry it. I turn it upside down and I say, oh, okay, looks good. I turn off the computer. Then I rush in a cab to the Mac store. They take one look at it and say, look, it doesn't matter if you have warranty. We don't deal with water damage. Why don't you go to the Mac store down the street? So I take it there. These guys take one look at it and they say, oh, doesn't look good. They say, leave it here for a couple days, we'll try it out and see what we can find. I go home, I'm weeping like a little girl because I have no computer. And frankly, what is life without a computer? And I wait and then they call me back. It's like a doctor calling you with the diagnosis. And they say, it doesn't look good. It's gonna cost you about 600 bucks to see if it will work. And we're not even sure if it will work. By this point, I've already paid him about 150 bucks in just preliminary repair costs. So at this point, two things happen. First of all, I start crying. Second of all, I decide to be Ramit, right? The huge weirdo who doesn't make. I might make a big mistake, but I'm damn sure gonna try to figure out a clever way to get out of it. So what I do is this. I first of all asked them would they be interested in buying it? And they said actually, yeah, they'd buy it for parts, about 400 bucks. Step two, I went on ebay and looked and it turned out someone had done almost exactly the same thing. Brand new MacBook, spilled coffee on it. They decided to sell it for parts, and they sold it for roughly 550 bucks on eBay. Step three, I submitted a claim to my credit card. Now, this is something that involves purchase protection. Virtually every card has it. It's not just amex. And I said, look, I accidentally spilled coffee on this. Can you send me some forms? I'd like to get reimbursed. No problem. They've got an insurance company. If you buy something fully on your credit card, this is one of the benefits. If it gets lost or stolen or broken in the first 30, 60, or 90 days, you can often get reimbursed for 500 or sometimes up to $1,000. I go back to the Mac shop, and I say, look, you guys are offering me roughly 400 bucks. How about you give me a little bit less? 600, I'll do it. They said, Nope, can't do it. 400 it is. Because we're just not sure if this is actually going to work. So I said, no, thanks. Put it back together. I'll take it away. I sent this ebay ad to my assistant, and I had her draft up a very similar ad on I spilled coffee. We're not sure if it's going to work, but if you're a repair person, maybe it will, or you can use it for parts. She puts it on ebay, and total cost to me is about, you know, 20 bucks or so. The third thing I do is I get the paperwork and I fill it out. Now, I want to tell you about one mistake that I filled out in the paperwork for the credit card. They asked me to get an estimate from the repair shop, and I asked the repair shop, but those guys gave me an estimate on how much it would cost to possibly repair it. In other words, it was about 530 bucks. What I should have asked them to do is give me an estimate for how much it would cost to guarantee repairing, because I don't want it to be maybe repaired. I want it to be fully repaired. Unfortunately, I didn't think of this beforehand. And so here's what happened. First of all, I sold the computer on eBay for $661, okay? Which is pretty amazing. It's a computer that was going to questionably work, but somebody wanted to fix it. And I made clear that on the ebay ad, hey, this thing may or may not ever work. Take it as is. The second thing is, I got this check for about 530 bucks. So net net, my results were about $1,200 in. I spent about $300 on expenses for my, you know, repair and assistant and stuff like that. Overall, give or take, I was about $200 out of pocket. So, you know, $200 sucks, but $200 is a lot better than $1,300 out of pocket. So here's the key takeaways for you, alright? If you read or watch I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. You know that first of all, hopefully you don't have any credit card debt. When you make major purchases, use a credit card because there are all kinds of consumer protections you get. So you can take something you bought and if you break it, lose it, it gets stolen. You can get reimbursed for that right away. Make sure you call your credit card up and ask them exactly what paperwork needs to be done. Keep copies of all that paperwork, get it notarized if necessary. And don't forget that if you've got something that's broken that seems like it would be completely useless to you, there are probably people online who would still pay for it. In this case, they paid $661 for it. And that's how I prevented myself from making a one $200 mistake. Thanks a lot for watching. This is Ramit Seti from I Will Teach you to be Rich.
