I just can’t imagine spending so much money for a repair, only to have my device become a paperweight less than a week after the repair. That is the experience I hear so often from customers who come into my office after going to a Large Box Store, no names (Staples) for a repair done by employees who may not have the kind of training or experience required to do such a job. Staples charges prices that are comparable to Apple’s out of warranty prices. Those prices are almost double what I have here at iSolution Pros.
A customer came in earlier this week with an iPhone 6S that he had a screen and battery replaced at Staples days ago. The phone would not come on with any type of charger. Immediately, I was concerned. When you hear the repair history, then all of a sudden the phone stops taking a charge, you have to prepare for the worst. Sure enough, upon opening the phone up, you see the job done. You notice the aftermarket battery, then the aftermarket screen, then you start to notice the stuff not done correctly. The screws missing, the brackets put in backwards, the battery cable not installed right.
At that point, I questioned the customer again and asked ” You are sure that Staples did this?” There are so many thoughts going through your head at this time. Like, “How on Earth can such a large company like Staples allow this kind of repair to happen for the prices they charge?” After continuing with the diagnostic process, the only hardware repair I can do is to check the Charging Port. To do that, what I do is plug in a new charging port without installing it, and since the battery was dead not he installed battery, I plug in a new battery that has a charge to get the phone to turn on. After the phone came back on with the new battery plugged in and the new charging port plugged in, I plugged in a charger and the phone did not show any signs of charging.
Now the customer has already paid over $140 for the original repair with Staples, I have diagnosed a Blown Charging u2 IC chip and that repair to have done had to be mailed out and the customer is looking at another $135 repair. All of this, caused by either a combination of installer error and/or bad parts. On top of that, the customer was told their “Touch ID would no longer work”. The only way touch ID doesn’t work anymore is if the Tech did not transfer the original home button to the new screen and replaced it, or they damaged the original.
This customer is not the first one to walk through my door with issues after going into Staples for an iPhone screen repair. About a month ago, I had another customer come in (Who only found out about my business after the fact) who had a repair done by Staples. He had paid for a new screen, only to get his iPhone 7 back with his home button not working. He had told me he complained, but was told since he signed the “waiver” before his repair, they were not responsible for the damage.
As most people with iPhone 7’s know, the home button is not an actual button, but merely an electronic response. When you press down on the button, it feels like it is being pressed in, however it is just the vibrator inside the phone responding to your touch to give the feeling of a press. The iPhone 7 home buttons are not replaceable. The logic boards are paired with the original home buttons. However a lot of times when this issue happens after a screen replacement, an experienced tech knows its normally not because the home button is damaged. The replacement screens come with an extension for the home button that goes up the back side of the screen, and usually that is the culprit. Instead of replacing the screen, this tech sent the customer out with a non-working home button simply because he signed their waiver.
When the customer told me the back story, I decided to take the phone apart to see if I could diagnose the issue. By the way, when I do diagnostics, there is never a charge. If I can’t fix the phone, there is no charge. So a lot of time, I do diagnostics for customers who never end up getting the phone fixed by me. I just end up pointing them in the right direction if its something I can’t do. When I opened this phone, again there were missing screws and pieces that were just not reinstalled correctly. My biggest concern was the home button though. After inspecting the home button, I did not see any visual damage to the button itself. That’s when I tried unplugging it from the screen from Staples and installing it onto a new screen I supplied. That’s when the button started working again. It was just a cheap screen that came with a broken home button extension cable. At that point, the customer had to decide if they wanted to do another screen replacement to remedy the issue, which they did. So on top of the $150 they had just paid Staples to give them a bad screen, they had to pay the $90 for the same repair from me, but to have it done correctly.