The root of the issue was identified by a third party repair shop, narrowing down to two capacitors that were providing the wrong voltage, preventing the MacBook Air to boot up.

While I agree that a repair shop technician is certainly more technically skilled and trained to find those issues than an apple genius bar associate, it is up to Apple to ensure that they equip their associates with the right tools and processes to identify the root cause prior to providing a quote, and even more so to inform the customer prior to performing the work order, or charging the customer.

Coincidentally, I just came back from a battery swap of my MacBook, and in my experience, there was confirmation at every step of the way before proceeding, even down to email receipts, to ensure that I understand the problem, and approve the work order. In this lady’s case, someone fucked up big time.