We Come In for a Service Estimate: A Look at Apple's Self-Service Repair Policy

As we come in for a service estimate, I do understand that not every diagnosis can be done remotely. However, this policy seems to exist only to give store employees an opportunity to present alternate solutions, like new devices, especially if you consider that they also have this page up on their website which you can find if you dig hard enough. So, we'll use numbers from here and take our iPhone 12 Pro Max as an example.

We're looking at $330 dollars to let Apple take care of an out-of-warranty display replacement. That's a lot less than the $700-plus dollars that we spent buying all these tools. But there are still some problems here, even if you choose to rent, you're looking at right around $340 dollars for that same procedure using those same tools if you do it yourself and that is after Apple's generous credit for returning your old parts. For context, by the way, the used battery and screen of this particular iPhone were only worth about $58 combined. Even the most unfair video games offer a better buyback price than that on your used gear.

If we forget to send those parts back, that $340 figure jumps to $375. So, how does the math work on this Apple? I mean, I can understand that these are genuine replacement parts, not to be confused with say for example this OLED screen we got on eBay for about $200 bucks. But if your own technicians who presumably are paid actually do this for 20 an hour can do it for $329 with non-EBAY screens then something's gone terribly wrong. If it costs us more to do it ourselves as a first-timer, Sarah's screen repair on her own phone took about four hours which means that even if she values her time at only minimum wage, which she doesn't trust me I know it cost her nearly $440 US dollars to fix her phone herself when Apple would have done the work for a hundred and ten dollars less.

The Only Way It Makes Any Sense

The only way then that this makes any sense is if you live three to five hours away from an Apple store. Almost, no even then a whole ass iPhone SE third Gen costs less than what Sarah paid to fix her own screen and that's before any trading credits or carrier subsidies on that new device. It's almost like making this an awful value for their customers was apple's goal from the start. But hold on, you might be thinking maybe this becomes a better value for a small-time repair shop who buys the tools like we did well as far we can tell that's unlikely aside from the parts pricing being insultingly high they require a device serial number in order to order replacements remember that'll prevent any casual repair hustler from having inventory on hand.

That's what we expected but I still can't help but be disappointed. This could have been a huge step forward for Right To Repair and Apple could have been at the forefront but it's obvious now that we've dug deeper that the program was designed to be as unappealing as possible. Apple's exact reasons for making self-service repair suck are as impenetrable as they always are I don't know anything about what you're talking about but some obvious guesses include increasing profit margins I mean if you can charge more for the individual parts compared to if they bought the whole thing that's good for your shareholders pushing users to buy new devices rather than continue using their old ones or just maybe as simple as having something to point to when government pressure increases to support Right To Repair so they can say hey look we tried and no one did it so clearly this doesn't matter that much man.

This Sucks

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iPhone 13 Review

If you guys are looking for something else to watch the iPhone 13 well it's a pretty great phone as long as it isn't broken so we've got our full review linked down below

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enas an infamous butterfingers i have dropped my fair share of phones i present exhibit a my iphone 6 that regrettably succumbed to that most cruel of mistresses gravity fortunately apple has the solution for the low low price of just 49 us dollars they will ship the genius bar to you allowing you to do your very own iphone repairs from the comfort of your home that's right the kit in front of me includes everything i need to replace a broken screen dead battery and more thank you apple from the bottom of my heart you are truly gracious and benevolent as usual the story is a little bit more complicated than that and also a bit more sponsored by cablemod cablemod makes cables to last and their power supply and keyboard cables are each a great way to spice up your system complete your pc setup today with 10 off all their products using the code 10 cable mod at the link below when i was a wee lad the solution to this problem was simple you dropped off your phone at that mall kiosk that smelled vaguely of cheese and a couple of hours later you'd pick it up with a brand new screen that smelled deadly of cheese these days the process of having a phone repaired has evolved as much as the phones themselves starting with the iphone 6 this one coincidentally certain components like the home button became electronically tethered to the logic board and replacing them outside of apple official channels would result in error messages and anti-consumer practice that apple justifies by saying it is necessary for security it's not what it's actually about is controlling access to parts and services which preserves profit for apple and its partners as long as those partners play by apple's stringent rules however with the launch of the self-service repair program in april apple at least on the face of things seems to be opening the floodgates wide so any owner of an iphone 12 13 or third gen se can use this service and it's a good bet that the next iphone will get the same treatment but wait did i say any owner before you can even place an order for replacement parts apple does have a way to weed out the folks who might be a little less serious or a little less capable no offense the repair manuals for all of these devices are freely available on their website kudos apple by the way and step one is to rtfm inside these fams each procedure is well documented and photographed kudos again apple but we also find the first major caveat of the self-repair service regardless of which iphone you have there are only five user replaceable components the display cameras taptic engine battery and speaker now in fairness this will cover most whoopsies but if you've got a phone with physical damage to the frame but that otherwise functions perfectly or if you've got charging problems with the lightning connector you are going to have to look elsewhere speaking of problems we've got a behind-the-scenes look at the tech problems that we encounter here at the office it's up on floatplane.com so go sign up to check it out from here the requirements for renting or buying tools and replacement parts are surprisingly simple first you need to prove that you read the manual at least far enough to get the little code from it second you must provide the serial number of the device to be repaired and third you're going to need some money given the choice we would recommend renting rather than buying the equipment it's surprisingly affordable you pay only 49 us dollars to cover both tools and shipping in both directions and you've got one week from the date of their arrival to perform your repair there's unfortunately no option for time extension though if you end up needing them for longer than those seven days and apple will charge you an unspecified fee along with tax if you're late to give them back or the full cost of the tools if you don't return them at all if you do wish to buy rather than rent watch out because while some tools will have the same function or dimensions they may be referred to by different part numbers in different manuals making it a bit of a chore to search for anything by part number and make sure you're getting all the exact right phone guillotines another huge plus of renting is that it's much more of an all-in-one solution you choose the kit that's appropriate for your phone and it arrives with everything you need in hard shell pelican cases with wheels i like it for us though we knew that the tools would have to stick around the office for longer than a week so we chose to pay for them in full that's why they came in these boring cardboard boxes though we did note while unboxing them that apple uses a high quality closed cell phone that is cut to the exact dimensions of our tools and everything arrived in perfect working order speaking of unboxing you can do it in comfort with the short circuit hoodie from ltdstore.com why don't we play with some of these yeah all right full credit for quality they're using vera bits and these look like vera torque drivers for removal it doesn't matter which one we use i'm just going to grab a random one one thing apple doesn't include is a parts tray so if you want to keep track of these tiny little screws and these are actually on the bigger side you're going to want to get at the very least a magnet off your fridge then we loosen the clamp slide it into the heated display pocket clamp that bad boy into place oh not coming out again credit apple i've paid more for less when it comes to the complexity and quality of the tooling on things like camera equipment these are probably the contacts for uh yep there they are for heating up this whole assembly that lock i like it no offense to ifixit but it kind of makes the eye opener look like a caveman tool you microwave it and put it down on the edges that you're trying to soften the glue on this will freely spin rather than allow you to over torque it onto your display see that stops going down now we power up our heated display removal fixture you just rotate this knob and hit the switch at the back oh is it going now right now it's going through a cycle where it needs to be at temperature for two minutes after which time we are going to lower the suction cup on and we should be able to pull the display off all right geez now the knob goes down as far as it goes this buddy goes into place can confirm it is a little toasty now buddy you gonna peel up does it say how long it will take i can definitely see the display bowing up we want to aim for the i guess this is the bottom of the phone bottom edge pop that into place and it should be as simple as turning the knob counterclockwise and they want 30 seconds oh yeah oh it's pulling with the display up five degrees we are clear to pull the suction cup off ooh come on and pull the phone out of the heated display fixture you could oh you could burn yourself on this all right having gone through that i gotta say having the proper tools it's a good thing with that said nobody's blaming companies like ifixit for not having the proper tools if apple made them broadly available we'd all love to have the proper tools to do this work even this little machined holder is a potential lifesaver because it prevents you from putting too much strain on these ribbon cables which can cause them to shear i just broke a ribbon cable but tools are only half of the equation you won't be repairing much of anything without new parts to replace the old busted ones that's where things get a little bit less friendly apple offers a bundle of parts for each of the user serviceable components but be warned these bundles are not necessarily all-encompassing and you will need to double check with the manual to ensure you're getting all of the small odds and ends you need you can order an infinite number of consumables at once like shims adhesives and screws but only one of each major component at a time worryingly there is no word on how many of these you're allowed to purchase in the lifetime of your device or if there's some kind of waiting period between buying two of the same components say you want to replace your battery once a year for the lifetime of your device will apple cut you off at some point we don't know but what we do know is that they could and this is such a clear indication of apple's true attitude toward user repair that it's a privilege that they are granting you rather than your right we'll just have to let the service mature then and if there is such a limit i'm sure someone's going to be clumsy enough to find it and post about it on reddit bringing us then to our next stumbling block for apple time in addition to the shipping time for your order from the self-service repair shop you're going to need to factor in one to three days of processing time before anything will even be put in the mail so apple is making this service an option but if you need your phone back up and running quickly like oh i don't know most people it's unlikely to be an attractive one compared to i'm linus from linus tech tips and we need to talk about those fees or at least we wanted to when we called in the apple store flat out refused to offer any kind of quote for work over the phone insisting that we come in for a service estimate i do understand that not every diagnosis can be done remotely but this policy seems to exist only to give store employees an opportunity to present alternate solutions like say for example new devices especially if you consider that they also have this page up on their website which you can find if you dig hard enough so i guess we'll use numbers from here let's take our iphone 12 pro max here as an example we're looking at 330 dollars to let apple take care of an out of warranty display replacement that's a lot less than the 700 plus dollars that we spent buying all these tools but there are still some problems here even if you choose to rent you're looking at right around 340 dollars for that same procedure using those same tools if you do it yourself and that is after apple's generous credit for returning your old parts for some context by the way the used battery and screen of this particular iphone were only worth about 58 combined even the most unfair video games offer a better buyback price than that on your used gear and if we forget to send those parts back that 340 figure jumps to 375. how on earth does the math work on this apple i mean i can understand that these are genuine replacement parts not to be confused with say for example this oled screen we got on ebay for about 200 bucks but if your own technicians who presumably are paid actually it's about 20 an hour can do this for 329 with non-ebay screens then something's gone terribly wrong if it costs us more to do it ourselves as a first-timer sarah's screen repair on her own phone took about four hours which means that even if she values her time at only minimum wage which she don't trust me i know it cost her nearly 440 us dollars to fix her phone herself when apple would have done the work for a hundred and ten dollars less the only way then that this makes any sense is if you live three to five hours away from an apple store actually no even then a whole ass iphone se third gen costs less than what sarah paid to fix her own screen and that's before any trading credits or carrier subsidies on that new device it's almost like making this an awful value for their customers was apple's goal from the start but hold on you might be thinking maybe this becomes a better value for a small-time repair shop who buys the tools like we did well as far as we can tell that's unlikely aside from the parts pricing being insultingly high they require a device serial number in order to order replacements remember that'll prevent any casual repair hustler from having inventory on hand that's ready for potential customers and if you have to wait for the replacement anyway then starting to see a pattern here you might as well just go straight to the apple store it's what we expected but i can't help but still be disappointed this could have been a huge step forward for right to repair and apple could have been at the forefront but it's obvious now that we've dug deeper that the program was designed to be as unappealing as possible apple's exact reasons for making self-service repair suck are as impenetrable as they always are i don't know anything about what you're talking about but some obvious guesses include increasing profit margins i mean if you can charge more for the individual parts compared to if they bought the whole thing i guess that's good for your shareholders pushing users to buy new devices rather than continue using their old ones or just maybe as simple as having something to point to when government pressure increases to support right to repair so they can say hey look we tried and no one did it so clearly this doesn't matter that much man this sucks unlike our sponsor vulture vulture provides high performance cloud servers bare metal storage and managed kubernetes at a fraction of the cost of big tech you can deploy instances with your preferred os through 12 pre-selected operating systems and they have the ability to bring your own iso their networking features are optimized for multi-cloud deployments thanks to vpc peering and direct connect and with 25 server locations worldwide you can spin up a low latency infrastructure solution for wherever your users are with vulture talon cloud gpu you can deploy fractions of nvidia a100s to affordably handle even the most advanced workloads and with the vulture kubernetes engine they take a load of the hard work on for you so you can operate and scale with confidence using a 100 free control plane right now you can receive an exclusive 30-day 150 code for new signups just go to getvulture.com ltt to try vulture today if you guys are looking for something else to watch the iphone 13 well it's a pretty great phone as long as it isn't broken so we've got our full review linked down below\n"