“How do I choose an independent repair shop?” You’re in a rush to get to work and you quickly hop out of the driver’s seat. Before you know it, your phone has fallen from your lap onto the ground. Next, you take a breath and pray your phone is still intact. But, this time you’re out of luck. You decide to take your phone to an independent repair shop because you want to save yourself some time and money. Since there are tons of repair shops around these days, you find yourself wondering “how do I choose an independent repair shop?”.
This is a great question to ask considering the number of devices we re-fix every week due to shoddy repair work. When deciding on a shop, you will want to consider: the quality of a shop’s replacement parts, the cost of repairs, warranty (do they offer one?), and their reputation.
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Quality Replacement Parts
It would be nice if every shop used high quality parts, but the truth is most repair shops do not. Knockoff replacement parts cost much less than their high-quality counterparts. Many shops choose to use these cheaper parts to boost their profits. If you are shopping around for screen replacement, here are some signs that a part is low quality:
Blueish hue / Dimmed brightness / Unresponsiveness to touch
You can tell the replacement screen on the iPhone to the left is low quality due to the blueish tint. (image from St Andrew’s Disc Depot)
If the replacement screen’s brightness seems to have dimmed, and has a blueish tint to it, the part likely uses an aftermarket/Chinese LCD – this is considered poor quality. A screen with an aftermarket LCD may also respond poorly to your touch.
At Boston iPhone, we don’t take any shortcuts when it comes to parts. We source only the highest quality parts available on the market, and charge a fair rate for our work.
Repair Cost
If the price of a repair seems too good to be true, then it probably is. High-quality parts generally cost the same no matter who the supplier is. Shops that charge $20-$40 less than what most shops charge are able to do this because they buy inexpensive knockoff parts. Keep this in mind when you think you’ve found a bargain.
Warranty
Another tell-tale sign of a shop that uses cheap parts are short warranty periods, or even worse, no warranty at all. Reputable shops that use high-quality parts will offer a warranty of some kind.
A 90-day warranty is pretty standard in this industry. We offer a six month warranty on our repairs.
Shop reputation, and transparency
Can you find this shop on Yelp or Google? A trustworthy shop is open to making their presence known to the public, and allows others to provide public feedback. Check out our Yelp page for some of our reviews 🙂
On a separate note, you can tell you are being lied to if a shop tells you they use Apple parts! Unless they are an Apple service center, they will not have access to the same exact parts used by Apple. That said, a reputable shop will know how and where to source high quality parts, built to fit the specifications of Apple products.
By now, we hope you have a better sense of what to look for in choosing an independent repair shop, and as always, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.