“How to pick a quality independent repair shop?” You wake up, look outside and it seems like a perfect day for a run. You’re jogging along the beautiful bike path in Santa Monica, CA listening to your favorite new tunes. Just when everything seems perfect, your phone slips out of your hands and drops to the hard concrete.
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 in Los Angeles these days, you find yourself wondering “How do pick a quality independent repair shop?”.
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?)
Their reputation.
QUALITY REPLACEMENT PARTS
It would be nice if every shop used high-quality parts, but the truth is most repair shops do not. One thing to be cautious of is if an independent repair shop that is not an Apple Authorized dealer is telling you they use original parts.
BEWARE! It is likely they are not an honest repair center and are hoping you will not notice. Many shops choose to use 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
If the replacement screen’s brightness seems to be drastically dimmed, and has a blueish tint to it, the part likely uses an aftermarket/poor-quality LCD.
At uBrokeiT, 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 a significant amount 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. When it comes to phone or tablet repair the saying is true, “you get what you pay for”.
WARRANTY
Another sign of a shop that uses cheap parts is 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. This warranty covers any manufactures defect. That of course does not include the user breaking the glass.
SHOP REPUTATION, AND TRANSPARENCY
Can you find this shop on Yelp or Google? A trustworthy shop is open to making its presence known to the public and allows others to provide public feedback. It is easy for a dishonest shop to tell you they use the highest quality parts, but where it will truthfully show is in their online reviews. Check out our Yelp page for some of our reviews