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Most customer's are not able to go this in-depth into the "parts availability" issue. If you try to tell them, their eyes will just glaze over. The repair shop

Most customer's are not able to go this in-depth into the "parts availability" issue. If you try to tell them, their eyes will just glaze over. The repair shop will definitely have considered the option. They will have researched the pro's and con's. You complained about having to deal with the Genius Bar. I think a lot of repair shops will think that if they go into the repair program they will just turn into a worse version of the Genius Bar. In addition, the repair shop will know what kind of work they do, what kind of work they want to do, and where they get their profits from. You don't. So 90% of the time when a customer will suggest joining the apple repair program it's someone who doesn't understand the pro's and con's, doesn't understand the shops business case, and won't respond well to a full explanation of why the repair shop doesn't join. And this person is saying "you need to change your business model, this thing I heard about is better". Imagining myself in that position, I would also get pretty annoyed. Sometimes at a party or something someone hears about what I do, knows very little about it, and tells me I should do it completely differently. Doesn't happen often, but it's happened. I get pretty annoyed by that.

paulmd 3y ago
Call me a starry-eyed optimist but I think consumers are perfectly capable of understanding “you need to order the part off this website and I’ll install it for you”. This is the tradeoff you make for not having iPhones stolen and stripped for parts. If you allow “blank” parts with no serial, or allow pairing with random serials, then people will steal phones and strip them. I’m all for allowing “unpairing” of components when a unit is not in the “stolen lockout” state, such that they can be re-paired with other phones, but they do it for a reason, not just restricting repair. The value delivered to the average customer by reducing theft risk isn’t zero, and actually it’s probably more than consumers gain from the ability to have a third-party shop install a counterfeit battery with half of its advertised capacity. Apple battery replacements are dirt cheap, arguably actually probably dumping/under cost (this “byo part” thing usually ends up with repairmen whining that if they have to use first-party parts they can’t compete with apples pricing) because apple wants to make a show of greenwashing. So the commercial value of third-party battery repair is quite small. Is it all really actually worth saving 10 bucks?
- arein3 3y ago
  You may not know exactly which part needs to be replaced, until you go to a shop to diagnose the issue. That would be 2 trips instead of one. And there could be issues with multiple parts. And you can't know about further issues until you fix rhe first one, resulting in a lot of back and forth. Honestly this is a major spit in the face from apple, there is no reason to not make the parts available for sale.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    > You may not know exactly which part needs to be replaced, until you go to a shop to diagnose the issue. Isn’t one of the major, constant gripes of the repairmen that they can’t do component level repair and so they have to replace assemblies? That works in the favor of the repair program here. Oh it’s the camera? Well, there’s only one part that it can be - the camera board. Easy to order. Repairmen don’t like that but apple is never going to sign off on randos drilling and repadding and reballing their products. Like again, the accusations of bad faith are fundamentally misplaced. The faith is so good that independent repairmen can’t compete with the service rates that apple offers unless they’re using non-genuine parts to do it. It’s not exactly the way repairmen would prefer to do it, but it accomplishes the goals of maintaining product quality, preventing phone theft, and minimizing e-waste, and repairmen don’t really care about #1 or #2 so their solutions don’t solve for that. People don't like this take, but most of the time Apple's goals are not completely malicious or incoherent. Just like the sideloading thing: there are legitimate user-focused security and permissioning goals there, and people just don't like it when those ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. Letting users bypass permissioning and app review mean those processes might as well not exist, you have to put a non-trivial barrier there (like requiring a developer account). And providing board-level repairs and driving down the cost of assemblies is realistically how products have to be serviced in the modern world. Krisfix drilling and repadding 4090 boards is not typical quality/skill and is not a scalable model for a repair network. This needs to be something that can be done by a person with 1 year of experience in a strip mall store. Right to repair does not mean that rossman's business model is the only way that can ever be allowed to work. Shipping around a tiny PCB is not a big deal and board level repairs still keep phones out of landfills, even if it doesn't keep rossman in business. There is no inherent right to profit in capitalism, you can't outlaw someone's business model just because it makes yours difficult.
turquoisevar 3y ago
> You complained about having to deal with the Genius Bar. I think you might be confusing me with someone else, I don’t recall complaining about the Genius Bar? > So 90% of the time when a customer will suggest joining the apple repair program it's someone who doesn't understand the pro's and con's […] Who’s talking about customers making suggestions? We’re talking about customers asking if they are or aren’t an authorized repair shop that’s in the program. Customers have plenty of legitimate reasons to ask this question, and shops that get pissed when they are being asked this question will quickly lose the trust of their customers. I can understand why shops get pissed when they’re being asked the question, because best case scenario they see the writing on the wall and know they’re about to lose a prospective customer and “worst” case scenario they are about to be confronted with the reality that someone might in fact not agree with their beliefs that a non-official part is as good as an Apple OEM part or that their beliefs that their work is on par with Apple’s certified repair processes. But from the perspective of the customer the question comes with the implication that the customer has a certain standard they’re looking for and they are not interested in someone who doesn’t meet that standard, regardless of if the workman shares the same opinions on those standards.

paulmd 3y ago

Call me a starry-eyed optimist but I think consumers are perfectly capable of understanding “you need to order the part off this website and I’ll install it for you”. This is the tradeoff you make for not having iPhones stolen and stripped for parts. If you allow “blank” parts with no serial, or allow pairing with random serials, then people will steal phones and strip them. I’m all for allowing “unpairing” of components when a unit is not in the “stolen lockout” state, such that they can be re-paired with other phones, but they do it for a reason, not just restricting repair. The value delivered to the average customer by reducing theft risk isn’t zero, and actually it’s probably more than consumers gain from the ability to have a third-party shop install a counterfeit battery with half of its advertised capacity. Apple battery replacements are dirt cheap, arguably actually probably dumping/under cost (this “byo part” thing usually ends up with repairmen whining that if they have to use first-party parts they can’t compete with apples pricing) because apple wants to make a show of greenwashing. So the commercial value of third-party battery repair is quite small. Is it all really actually worth saving 10 bucks?

arein3 3y ago
You may not know exactly which part needs to be replaced, until you go to a shop to diagnose the issue. That would be 2 trips instead of one. And there could be issues with multiple parts. And you can't know about further issues until you fix rhe first one, resulting in a lot of back and forth. Honestly this is a major spit in the face from apple, there is no reason to not make the parts available for sale.
- paulmd 3y ago
  > You may not know exactly which part needs to be replaced, until you go to a shop to diagnose the issue. Isn’t one of the major, constant gripes of the repairmen that they can’t do component level repair and so they have to replace assemblies? That works in the favor of the repair program here. Oh it’s the camera? Well, there’s only one part that it can be - the camera board. Easy to order. Repairmen don’t like that but apple is never going to sign off on randos drilling and repadding and reballing their products. Like again, the accusations of bad faith are fundamentally misplaced. The faith is so good that independent repairmen can’t compete with the service rates that apple offers unless they’re using non-genuine parts to do it. It’s not exactly the way repairmen would prefer to do it, but it accomplishes the goals of maintaining product quality, preventing phone theft, and minimizing e-waste, and repairmen don’t really care about #1 or #2 so their solutions don’t solve for that. People don't like this take, but most of the time Apple's goals are not completely malicious or incoherent. Just like the sideloading thing: there are legitimate user-focused security and permissioning goals there, and people just don't like it when those ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. Letting users bypass permissioning and app review mean those processes might as well not exist, you have to put a non-trivial barrier there (like requiring a developer account). And providing board-level repairs and driving down the cost of assemblies is realistically how products have to be serviced in the modern world. Krisfix drilling and repadding 4090 boards is not typical quality/skill and is not a scalable model for a repair network. This needs to be something that can be done by a person with 1 year of experience in a strip mall store. Right to repair does not mean that rossman's business model is the only way that can ever be allowed to work. Shipping around a tiny PCB is not a big deal and board level repairs still keep phones out of landfills, even if it doesn't keep rossman in business. There is no inherent right to profit in capitalism, you can't outlaw someone's business model just because it makes yours difficult.

turquoisevar 3y ago

> You complained about having to deal with the Genius Bar. I think you might be confusing me with someone else, I don’t recall complaining about the Genius Bar? > So 90% of the time when a customer will suggest joining the apple repair program it's someone who doesn't understand the pro's and con's […] Who’s talking about customers making suggestions? We’re talking about customers asking if they are or aren’t an authorized repair shop that’s in the program. Customers have plenty of legitimate reasons to ask this question, and shops that get pissed when they are being asked this question will quickly lose the trust of their customers. I can understand why shops get pissed when they’re being asked the question, because best case scenario they see the writing on the wall and know they’re about to lose a prospective customer and “worst” case scenario they are about to be confronted with the reality that someone might in fact not agree with their beliefs that a non-official part is as good as an Apple OEM part or that their beliefs that their work is on par with Apple’s certified repair processes. But from the perspective of the customer the question comes with the implication that the customer has a certain standard they’re looking for and they are not interested in someone who doesn’t meet that standard, regardless of if the workman shares the same opinions on those standards.