MBP 17" A1189 battery fail – please help access Apple Customer Support?

Question

Seven Steps to a “Help Me, Please?” Plea for Assistance
[1] 2009 – Apple creates global, free-of-change, battery replacement program: ‘MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update 1.2’ Exchange and Repair Extension Program – for their design-flawed Apple A1189 battery’s dead-&-bloated failure mode. [kudos, respect due]
     A typical design-flawed Apple A1189 battery in dead-&-bloated failure mode – swollen cells crack open the battery’s casing 
[2] 2011 – My A1189 battery fails, dead-&-bloated: Apple replace it free-of-change, as per [1], and my MacBook Pro is up-&-running again in no time. [perfect Apple Customer Service, as usual]
[3] 2014 – My A1189 battery fails, dead-&-bloated (and takes down power adapter too): Apple now wants ME to pay THEM for the replacement parts needed to repair the damage caused by THEIR design-flawed A1189 battery failure to MY Macbook Pro!
Erm... surely some mistake? I think NOT: intolerable Apple[don’t]Care injustice is intolerable – “So, we bust your computer, eh? Fuggedabahdid! You give us money, we fix your computer, capiche?”
[4] Wed 28 May – My ‘Apple UK Complaint’ is tasked to Apple employee.
[5] Fri 06 Jun – After 12 emails over 9 days, our complaint resolution progress STILL EQUALS ZERO –
[6] Sat 07 Jun – ‘Help Me, Please?’ shout out goes out to the Apple Support community.
Many thanks in advance for your assistance,
Dalinian
[Loyal 6-Macs-over-21-years Apple customer, pining for the days of perfect Apple Customer Support]
<Personal Information Edited By Host>

Answer 1

Hi Melophage,
Happy, Happy Day! With only the opposite of help from Apple Inc., and in reality thanks to the assistance and encouragement of my BFF IRL and your good self, my grand old MacBook Pro Kallisti has risen from Hades once again, and sprung back to life – and this reply is coming at you from her very own keyboard and net connection.
My non-Apple replacement battery and a second-hand power adapter from TheBookYard.com in Liverpool arrived on Tuesday, and with the swapping in of an unblown 3A fuse, all is as well again as it was before Apple’s design-flawed A1189 battery killed Kallisti for the second time.
What I’ve neglected to mention so far is that in early 2014, the screen began to fail intermittently, then with increasing frequency, until only via a DVI-HTML cable to my 50-inch TV could I see what I was doing at all. Yesterday the screen was working again initially, but only for a couple of hours, before failing to black again.
Seems this is yet another well-known and well-documented fault with all the MacBook Pros that use the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor – see, eg: Apple’s (also prematurely terminated) ‘MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues’ » http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377 . I’ve a shed load of reading up to do on this issue from all over the web, including what appear to be some possible DIY fixes. I’ll most likely not waste any more time or energy on expecting Apple to take any responsibility for yet another well-known and well-documented fault with their MacBook Pro, since I find their naked contempt policy for Mac owners who fail to buy a shiny new Mac when the old one breaks down to be utterly revolting (not to mention environmentally unethical and unnecessarily destructive).
Re: you yourself being of the Yanqui petite bourgeois persuasion – on the two occasions I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the USA, I’ve been genuinely impressed by the admirable attributes of the Americans I’ve met and stayed with: heartwarmingly generous with their time and attention, welcoming with an effusive hospitality, helpful, friendly, and compassionate. Yet there’s a world of difference between the esteem in which I can hold individual Americans, and the contempt in which I can hold the ruling class social institutions of any country, including especially the USA and my own, the UK: greed-centric corporations, brutally repressive police forces, mass-killing-focussed foreign policy initiatives, etc., &c. Rest assured, from what little I know of you, you’re certainly in my highly esteemed American individuals category.
I don’t know how useful my advice was, since it wasn’t sufficient to convince the store manager at the Regent Street Apple store to provide you with a replacement battery.
I’m pretty sure nothing short of physical torture (which is obviously and repellently obnoxious) would convince that heartless, hard-nosed SoB to break with Apple’s iron cast built-in obsolescence policy – listen up and listen good: your Mac’s so old it’s ‘vintage’, so screw you, buddy – if you ain’t gonna buy a new Mac, or buy from us the parts needed to repair the damage we did to your old Mac with our known-to-be-faulty components, you can can just get the **** out of our shiny, shiny Apple Store, coz respecting your fancy-schmantzy ‘UK statutory consumer rights’ is only gonna put a dent in our bottom line, and getting to be filthy rich off of the likes of youse is what Apple’s really all about these days, capiche? I have GOT TO End This Conversation NOW!   
There’s plenty of free web-based help and advice on reporting dodgy traders like Apple to the Trading Standards authority, and pursuing reparations from such lawbreakers through the small claims track in the civil courts. So now I’ve Kallisti back up-&-running again (albeit with a dead screen), on which to document my anti-Apple legal research, I’m taking my time to ensure I’m following due process, and relishing the irony of developing a suitable regulatory/legal punishment for Apple on the very ‘vintage’ flagship MacBook Pro which their offending policy has all but written off as obsolete. Plus, since it turns out its “Super”drive won’t eject a freshly burned DVD-R, I’ve ordered an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32-bit DVD to do a fresh unibooting install on my 2001-design backup PC notebook, to add some non-Apple computer robustness to my resources, until such time as I’ve saved up enough for to buy a purpose-built touch screen Ubuntu 14.04 LTS notebook, such as the System76 Darter UltraTouch (» https://system76.com/laptops/model/daru4 ); and that leaves plenty of time ahead to compare the long-term customer support reputations of potential Ubuntu PC manufacturer companies, to ensure that I don’t get taken for a fool by another Apple-like mobster-type corporation.
Time to begin investigating coconutBattery, I think. Many thanks again, Melophage – with zero support from fellow Mac users, I’d most likely have given up and thrown in the towel some time ago, but you’ve helped me to find the self-motivation to persist in perusing a just solution, despite my beginning this process by being sunk in the depths of an episode of severe clinical depression. I must admit, I’d no idea that contending against Yanqui corporate fascism could be so therapeutic!