I received a phone call from my son yesterday evening to say that his 11 day old MBP wasn’t working. There was me thinking that I’d packed him off to university with a reliable device that wouldn’t require technical support from me every 5 minutes 
When he could actually get it to turn on, all he saw on the screen was a folder with a question mark. A bit of Googling and the answers I was getting back didn’t look promising. I suggested he start an online chat with Apple support.
He phoned back an hour or so later and said that they got him to try all sorts of reset type stuff (PRAM, SMC, etc.) but to no avail and then suggested he arrange a Genius appointment. The earliest he could get was next Thursday.
I phoned the online retailer this morning and after 2 minutes on their support line they pretty much agreed that it was dead and would put me through to the online sales team to arrange a replacement. Naturally, there was no more stock anywhere of the model he has (2017 13" 256GB with TouchBar). With a £350 discount I wasn’t in the least bit surprised. I asked about paying the £200 difference to get the 512GB version, which they have plenty of.
As it was a replacement for a faulty machine they could knock 10% off the full price and after the guy spoke to his supervisor they’ve agreed to replace it with the higher capacity for no extra charge.
Only downside is the returns process which on the receipt of the broken one will see the replacement shipped to me at home probably Wednesday or Thursday. At least I can configure it and get it up and running easily, before driving a 3-hour round trip down to Southampton with it in the evening.