I had a similar experience with an Apple authorized service center in Mexico; I wasn’t near an Apple Store. They couldn’t fax my laptop’s broken screen. I had

I had a similar experience with an Apple authorized service center in Mexico; I wasn’t near an Apple Store. They couldn’t fax my laptop’s broken screen. I had another broken screen about a year later, and the Apple Store in Berlin fixed it right away. However, I think it’s misleading to say Apple Store good, Apple authorized partners bad. When I was in Berlin, remembering my experience in Mexico, I was trying hard to get an appointment at the Apple Store & not at an authorized Apple service center. When I couldn’t find a same/next day appointment at the Apple Store in the Apple support app, I went down to the Apple Store to see if walk in repair appointments were a thing (they weren’t at that time). While learning how the repair process works, I discovered that the Apple Store (in Berlin) doesn’t do their own repairs! They, and every authorized partner, all delegate the repairs to some behind the scenes repair center that does extremely high volume for all Apple devices in the local area. My semi-informed opinion is that you really want to find out if your local Apple service center is connected to some high volume repair hub. If they are, you can hope your device will be repaired reasonably quickly. The repair hub will likely have technicians who have seen your problem before, a lot of the parts already in stock, and a well understood process for ordering the parts they know you need. If you go with a repair shop outside that does all the work in house, I’d guess you can expect your device to get repaired or replaced eventually, but only after an unknown amount of time.