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Comment by CTmystery | Hacker News Reader

This is only ever so slightly related, but I just have to write this somewhere because it happened yesterday. An iPhone X is what, 4 years old? I took one that died completely to the apple store yesterday. They said that it's out of warranty and the "logic board was dead" so there was nothing they could do. But I could pay $560 for a new one! I dissappointedly gave them the phone to recycle. Then on the walk out of the mall I saw one of the "we fix phones" kiosks and thought I'd give it a shot. I was thankfully able to get the "paperweight" phone back from the Apple Store. And, I'm not kidding here, this single employee at the kiosk had the phone split open and booting in under two minutes. The genius bar staff just resorts to "bad logic board" when they don't want to spend even a minute diagnosing the problem. Or maybe they don't have the skills, IDK. I was happy that this solo kiosk rep was a repair wizard.

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I don't think genius employees are trained or permitted by Apple rules to open up a phone and start tinkering around. They are very much there to provide basic t1 tech support, and if anything is broken in hardware to send it back to the mothership for repair/replace.

Correct. Genius Bar folks are not hardware-repair folks.

Isn't that the problem though?

That someone in a mall kiosk is more skilled and authorized to fix a phone than an entire Apple store full of Apple geniuses?

Edit: Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASP) have mall kiosks, for those doubting authorization.

Skilled perhaps. Authorized? No. At least not by Apple.

Ah, when talking about authorized:

Several repairs on iPhones and other Apple hardware are exactly that: not authorized by Apple, unless done by Apple itself.

That guy in the mall kiosk makes money by fixing phones. Apple makes money by selling new phones, and geniuses are paid to follow a script.

> That guy in the mall kiosk makes money by fixing phones. Apple makes money by selling new phones, and geniuses are paid to follow a script.

Telling customers that the phone cannot be repaired is deceptive though when it actually can be repaired. That's where I would expect regulators to step in.

The honest answer would have been: "We are not competent to repair your phone. Maybe someone else can repair it."

> The honest answer would have been: "We are not competent to repair your phone. Maybe someone else can repair it."

They may or may not be competent to repair the phone, but Apple probably doesn't permit them to. So it might be more accurate to say that they aren't allowed to repair the phone, but what they _can_ do is sell you a new one.

As shown so well in Doc Hollywood anything can be repaired with enough expertise and effort. A store employee saying something cannot be repaired is not going to be viewed by anyone, including a regulator, as meaning anything other than by the store employees either by capability or policy.

Harry Tuttle, cellphone repairman, at your service.

> Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASP) have mall kiosks

AASPs are prohibited from doing component level repair, they are only allowed to sent the phone to apple for anything more than major component (screen battery camera) swap.

The story would look exactly the same, motherboard problem = $560.

Seems like a scam that they are portraying these people as "genius" level repair services in order to trick customers into (unknowingly) giving apple their repairable devices.

Yes but aren't people who think they are geniuses the actual idiots? I guess we should protect idiots but can we?

I don't think it's idiotic at all to think that employees of an apple store would be more qualified to fix an iphone than someone in a phone repair kiosk at a mall.

I've had several friends and family use those "we fix phones" places to fix their iPhone. They're often their own form of a scam - you pay $100 and they "fix" your phone for 30-90 days. I've seen it happen many times.

How exactly do they do this?

They usually use batteries that are not the best. But the good kiosks will offer at least a one year warranty on the new battery.

In general one falling for a scam doesn’t make one an idiot. Though on the other hand it might also be a slick Nigerian prince kinda of filter to push even more stuff onto whoever falls for this genius trick.

Offering a non-zero level of trust to a corporation shouldn't be considered idiotic.

What's really idiotic is defending a corporation's deceptive business practices by saying anyone who gets tricked is an idiot who deserved to get tricked.

But I mean offering non-zero level of trust to a corporation shouldn't be considered idiotic, but offering a non-zero level of trust to apple a bit is, because like how many times to they have to fuck people before people understand? Like in EU the warranty is 2 years without ifs or but, and Apple has been fined for advertising them offering just one year, and still they're still advertising that they offer 1 year to sell more AppleCare+ of 2 years, apple is fucking cancer a shady shitty incorrect cheaty shitshole, what trust do you want to put in them?

Ideally I agree with you but I think as of now if you get an Apple product you need to understand that you are going to be scammed so buying anything Apple is idiotic

I’ve been buying Apple kit for 15 years now, on my fourth Mac and we’ve had over a dozen iPhones and handful of iPads on the family.

The reason I trust Apple is the products we’ve bought have lasted years and years, been highly reliable, had solid software support and upgrades for many years and been easy for me to repair (I’ve replaced the batteries on 4 phones using third party kits). Plus three times now when I’ve had problems with a device, even outside warranty, I’ve had free repairs or replacements for various reasons.

Data point of one of course from your perspective, but from my perspective this is handfuls of data points that tell me I made a good choice.

Yes I know plenty of others have had bad experiences, but I’ve had bad experiences with plenty of manufacturers. Overall through Apple has sky high customer satisfaction ratings for reasons.

I think when a company get fined for its dodgy warranty policy, a person coming around saying that it’s all good it’s either lucky or not super partes, not sure what to say, ok you got good experience with Apple, on the other hand it’s shit and get fined so I guess good for you

You have to choose between the options available. I’ve used kit from a wide variety of other manufacturers, with mixed results. None of them were ideal. I’m not expecting Apple to be perfect, they’re just a good option compared to the others in my experience.

I'm with you here... but marketing by corporations really works. People really believe that the genius bar people are skilled people with all the technical know-how and training to solve every problem.

People don't know that in reality, Apple looks for candidates who can make customers feel that way... while being able to follow basic protocol. Look at the key qualifications required to apply to be a Genius [1]:

> Strong people skills and a knack for problem solving.

> Ability to maintain composure and customer focus while troubleshooting and solving technical issues.

> Ability to adhere to a schedule of customer appointments.

[1] https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/114438151/us-genius

Calling it 'genius' is just puffery

It's actually Apple's reaction to a unionization effort.. I forget which one but I think it was in 2014.

At that time, Genius Bar employees were a relatively skilled workforce, and couldn't be immediately replaced because they needed months of training to be function, and years of experience to be really successful. That meant they had actual negotiation power with the store, and with corporate.

Ever since then Apple has been pushing to make the Genius position lower skilled and easier to replace. Genius discretion and knowledge has been replaced with flow charts on iPads, and a reduction in the amount of genius-bar serviceable parts in the devices.

Good marketing is indistinguishable from a scam, except in a court of law.

But you’re right in spirit.

Just like Best Buy Geek squad are not all actual computer geeks, I think the companies could argue this is just puffery. If I were a genius would I be working at a retail store counter?

More likely you’d be at the kiosk, judging by this story

Welcome to Apple style of marketing. Want to buy a Magic Mouse?

They are trying to keep their "Apple Care" insurance relevant by making their phones non-repairable by third parties. Geniuses aren't support, they are sales.

Apple replaced the trackpad on a 2017 non-retina MacBook Air for me in-store last month. It was $130. $51 parts and $79 labor ("HARDWARE REPAIR-LEVEL 1"). They are definitely capable of on-site hardware repairs. Further, if the repair doesn't fix the problem, it's no charge.

My only annoyance with Apple this time was that this MBA was like one month past its Applecare expiration and Apple wouldn't provide any sort of "customer good will" exception. My sob story about how much money I've spent with Apple going back decades was met only with: "sorry, policy."

I don't know why OP had such a different experience. Seems like a misdiagnosis if the kiosk person was able to repair it so quickly.

Trackpads are usually pretty easy to replace, hardest part is taking the laptop apart, unplugging the tiny cable without damaging anything and reversing the procedure. I've watched quite a few Apple repair videos, most of them with burned out chips, diodes or capacitors that require re-soldering, a skill I assure you the vast majority of "genius" bar employees don't possess nor do the stores even have the necessary tools on hand.

I was refuting "if anything is broken in hardware to send it back to the mothership for repair/replace" which is not true. They are capable of replacing components. In OP's case, they obviously misdiagnosed that the entire logic board needed replacement.

OP never said what the kiosk employee needed to do to get the phone operational, but given that it took less than two minutes, they likely didn't re-solder anything either.

I bought a Mac Pro in 2006 and became addicted to World of Warcraft. There was some weird bug with the GPU (Radeon x1900 XT), where it would eventually burn out. The Mac would boot, but no image on my ACD. So I schlepped the whole Mac Pro to the Apple store 50 miles away. They couldn't figure out why the GPU didn't work, so they replaced it under warranty.

Two months later, the GPU burned out again (Did I say I played a lot of WoW? Like 18 hours a day?). Schlepp this heavy beast to the store, they swap out the GPU again.

Three months later, GPU burns out again, I take it in, and they start giving me side-eye. The Mac was still under warranty, but they were sus about the whole situation. They still replaced the GPU, but kind of gave me the vibe that I was on some no-fly list.

Eventually gave up on WoW and the Mac lasted almost another decade as my primary desktop before I turned it into a Plex server in the basement.

Ha ha, just finished reading "Laserwriter II" [1] by Tamara Shopsin last night and it reminds me of this. It was a fun little book if only for the trip down memory lane before Apple stores and Genius Bars when ma and pa shops would repair Macs. Book was fun (not amazing) — easy to read in one day.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269270-laserwriter-ii

I agree with your overall point that Apple ought to be better about repairing old iPhones, but I would also caution you to wait a bit to see how reliable your iPhone X will actually be after that mall kiosk repair. I had an iPhone X screen replaced by a mall kiosk and it was awful. The screen kinda worked, but had lots of problems flickering and the touch screen seemed very unresponsive. The screen quality itself was also terrible. It wasn't OLED and had terrible color range and contrast.

All that is to say that while they did repair the phone enough to make it just barely usable, for less money than an Apple repair or a new phone purchase, but that's about it. If I had that same experience from Apple it would be totally unacceptable. I hope your iPhone X continues to work well for many more years, but I would be surprised!

Would be nice if the repair shop or you would have the right to buy the original screen from Apple or from Apple sources and not have to be forced to use second hand parts or black market parts because Apple does not allow you to repair your stuff yourself or at a competent shop.

Yes, but repair shops should also be upfront that their parts are often (albeit maybe due to no fault of their own) noticeably inferior to original parts.

Sure, like with cars you can decide what parts you want, do you want the expensive side mirror or a cheaper good enough one, you as owner decide and the mechanic or yourself replace the broken one.

There is an Apple program being rolled out to let you do your own repairs

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/11/apple-announces-self-...

https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/08/what-happened-to-apples-new-s...

Its a scam. Replacement screens cost as much as fully working second hand device.

I remember taking my macbook 2012 in which was acting up due to the HD connector becoming fried.

The only thing the "geniuses" managed to do was to screw up the HD so it couldn't load.

I ended up figuring out the issue, ordered a new cable and fixed the booting issue they introduced on the HD.

The laptop still works today - after a couple burnt HD cables I added some extra insulation (tape) and it seems to be running well. Recently took apart and added some new CPU adhesive as the laptop started smelling like body odour (apparently it's a thing with old macbooks).

I did recently upgrade to the new M1 Macbook Pro, but very happy to have been able to keep my 2012 around and still have it running well today.

This is the nice thing about having a large number of mostly identical devices deployed out there. Any problem is google-able and even with a vague description of symptoms, a plausible diagnosis and treatment can usually be predicted quickly.

It’s also why I like my mom’s old Toyota and hate my bicycle.

Aren't 90% of all bicycles just some Shimano components? Or at least most work the same way and documented in Big Blue Book by Park Tools.

Basically. Repairing bicycles is very easy and very standardized, except that some manufacturers just won't tell you what standard a part follows.

At least shimano stamps a part number on most of its parts. I mostly repair 70s-80s bikes and often encounter an “I’ve never seen this before”, or a situation where parts have the same branding on them, but clearly went through multiple (undocumented) iterations.

There ends up being a lot of “close enough” substitutions. E.g. cones on axles.

Servicing outdated hardware is completely against the Apple idea of providing an excellent customer experience, which requires helping you select from the current product offering that meets today’s performance experience goals

And the kiosk rep's name? Louis Rossmann

Nah, that’s Paul. Louis is busy promoting Right to Repair.

> Then on the walk out of the mall I saw one of the "we fix phones" kiosks and thought I'd give it a shot

Please tell us where that kiosk was. You could help a lot of people.

There are millions of them, usually one or more in each mall. The quality can vary depending on how well they've been trained; the more traffic they have the more likely they are to be pretty good.

If you have a broken screen Apple's flat fee for that is honestly very good; but if it is anything more you might as well try the kiosks.

What's the flat fee? I have a gen 1 iPad Pro 12.9" with a broken screen and all the quotes I could get for screen replacement were about the same as buying another one used (which is how I got this one, with an intact screen at the time), and maybe even upgrading a generation in the process.

[EDIT] I ask because I didn't find specific info on screen replacement on their site, just a general "service" fee that's about equal to what I paid for this thing originally, just after the gen3 came out.

“Screen replacement” isn’t a screen replacement, they literally give you another refurb at a discount. Source: broke my 12.9’’.

Yeah, they give you a refurb and send your old phone in to fix, which becomes a refurb for someone else down the line (supposedly).

The iPhone flat fees are here: https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/screen-repla...

The iPads are likely not included and yeah, the costs are insane.

It was at the entrance to stonestown mall in SF. Looks like it's called iRepair, and reviews are completely polarized so maybe I should see how long it works before singing their praises, as another commentor recommended: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31112815

In Boston, my go-to repair guy is a guy named Dr. Phil (or at least that's what he calls his store).

https://qp7243.wixsite.com/drphilrepaircenter

In Norway the law mandated "warranty" is 5 years for products like these. So if you didn't do anything uncommon to break it, it's Apple's problem to make you whole. If they make unservicable phones, that's just a cost they have to eat themselves, and thus provide you with a new one.

considering how small a % Norway is to apple they probably don't care about eating the cost

> that's just a cost they have to eat themselves

Companies never eat any costs like this. Warranties, including the original one, are insurance policies by another name. You pay a premium for the insurance. For the original warranty, that premium is part of the price of the phone. I guarantee Apple knows how much the premium is. What does an iPhone sell for brand new in Norway? Half again as much as in the US?

Of course, but it makes the average repair cost upfront. If two phones sell for $1000 in the US, but one has a 10% failure rate and the other 0%, you can't know that buying one of them will on average suddenly cost you a lot more in the future. In Norway the one with a high failure rate would instead be priced around $1100.

So manufacturers are incentivized to make more lasting products, which is also good for the environment.

> The genius bar staff just resorts to "bad logic board" when they don't want to spend even a minute diagnosing the problem. Or maybe they don't have the skills, IDK. I was happy that this solo kiosk rep was a repair wizard.

probably neither of those reasons... just more money for Apple this way

There are hundreds of Louis Rossmann videos on YouTube that are variations of exactly this. Apple quotes hundreds/thousands for a fix, he opens up the device and unbends a pin in 30 seconds.

What ended up being the actual problem with it?

On the bright side, Apple's poor customer support has opened a niche in the market for local entrepreneurs.

Cars are the same. Stay away from the stealership! Resist their grease-less uniforms and bright signs!

My brother-in-law is a Ford mechanic. When he has problems diagnosing something he has access to Ford's engineers. He can hook the car's computer up to Ford's network and the Ford engineers can run their "digital twin" in real time and see exactly what's going on. They diagnose the problem and my brother-in-law fixes it.

Here's the thing - my brother-in-law has been a mechanic for 40 years. He was raised on the race track building race cars. His side hustle as a kid was to repair lawnmowers people threw away as "junk" and sell them. I say all this to point out the man knows his way around a car - yet in this day and age he finds he needs access to the engineers.

You may want to think about that when thinking of the service department as the "stealership." That moniker is old and hasn't applied for the past 20 years.

With that in mind, I've also heard some manufacturers have a problem solving flow chart when the vehicles come in.

You plug it in, it gives you a diag plan, and you follow it. To venture away from this you need to ask permission.

I can see why this would be beneficial most of the time. Nine times out of ten it probably saves time, money, effort, reworks, etc. It's that one in ten time where I feel this would fall short.

> You plug it in, it gives you a diag plan, and you follow it. To venture away from this you need to ask permission.

That was my German car stealership experience. Car suddenly sounds rough and reports cylinder 1 misfire. I swap around sparkies and coil packs, but still cyl 1 misfire.

I write that up, go to dealership because this is beyond me and I figure they have fancier tools than my $20 reader. But for $250 they obviously didn’t read my note and advised replacing sparkies and coil packs even though I’ve 100% excluded those as the cause. And obviously if they had the tools to test a spark plug or coil back, they didn’t use them either.

Their flowcharts not only lobotomize their techs, but have taken the place of basic troubleshooting techniques.

Next indy read my notes and immediately does a compression test showing cyl 1 holds no pressure. Even sent pictures.

Correct diagnosis was failed exhaust valve spring. $2k later and I’m back in order. I shudder to think the stealership could even tear down and rebuild their engine that way.

Having worked in the auto industry, dealers are independent businesses with varying levels of quality. My fathers newish F150 was having many electrical problems and a Ford dealership could not fix it (really they claimed nothing was wrong because maybe they caused the issue in another repair), so he eventually had to take it somewhere else and they swapped the body ecu. Dealerships are no silver bullet to fixing everything, it depends on the quality of the people who work there.

My phone had a cracked screen 4 years ago. I got it repaired and still use it today.

They're not genii, they're sales assistants now.

"Genius" should be taken as "sales genius", not as "technology genius".

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