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Comment by sangnoir | Hacker News Reader

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sangnoir

> I mean that 75pound repair equipment requiring $1200 hold on a card...

How is this legal? Holds ought to be capped at the maximum payable for a transaction.

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It's a hold to ensure the rental of very expensive equipment used to perform the repair.

How is this legal? Holds ought to be capped at the maximum payable for a transaction.

Sounds like you've never rented a moving truck. Or a power tool. Or tried to rent a car with a debit card.

Last time I rented a van, the hold was AU$500 (around US$300). Seems pretty crazy to put a $1200 hold on some phone repair gear.

Vans may be slightly harder to hide than phone repair equipment.

I've rented all the items you've listed, plus construction equipment and hotel rooms, and none had this absurd cost:hold ratio. Notably, only the powertools were cheaper than the repair equipment in absolute terms.

Having a difference of 2 orders of magnitude between card hold and actual fee is absurd and atypical. I cant imagine a $7,500 hotel room stay placing a $120,000 hold

The $1200 amount comes from it being what the tools actually cost if you wanted to buy them. The hold is to bypass the whole “charge $1200, then return for $1150 credit” rigamarole. Doing that would affect your credit usage and could kill your score if it wasn’t returned before the card due date; A hold doesn’t.

You can't steal a hotel room. You can't permanently damage a hotel room.

The comparison makes no sense.

That ~$1200 was the maximum payable amount for the transaction. That's the price of buying everything, in the case that you don't return the rented equipment.

This is normal for renting tools.

You don't really need their toolkit to make the repair - most of the repair shops has the necessary tools already available for other phones.

The basic process of opening/closing any moder phone is basically the same.

It's not so much opening it, it's holding the back while you use heat and force to excavate the battery from the backshell. Apple appears to have fixed that issue with the iPhone 14.

iPhones had adhesive pull tabs for years now. You really did not need heat and force for that unless you ripped it.

And even if you did rip those tabs IPA does much better job of un-adhering the battery as you really don't want to use excessive force on lithium pouch cells unless you like your repair job to get "fast & furious" :-)

Well, I've done several, and one of the pull tabs generally breaks no matter how slow and careful you are. Then, it's on to reheating everything and dragging a monofilament under the battery. Without a vacuum hold-down stage, it is difficult and annoying. I don't recollect iFixit recommending IPA, does that work?

I've found out that you really need to gut that thing like a fish before trying to pull on those :-) Unless you take out vibrator etc from the bottom you almost always break atleast one off.

Yeah, IPA and thin plastic shim card. These are often sold in lockpicking shops for door shimming - costs few bucks. Or directly from iFixit site (/products/plastic-cards). Just snip it in half so it is not as wide (careful not to leave sharp corner that coud tear up that battery!). Then slip it under the battery and use it to guide few drops of IPA under there. Worked for me every time with almost no hassle.

Just be careful because IPA is of course flammable. If you would puncture the battery or make it spark, you could end up having quite a bad day. But that probably applies for the monofilament-under-the-battery approach too.

Taking out the vibrator from the bottom is a key move.

What's the problem if you intend to return it?

Not everyone has 1200 USD laying around.

Then don’t rent their tools. Say they only put a $100 hold, and you didn’t return them. Now they charge you $1100 but you can’t pay it or your credit limit would prevent it. Oops. As another commenter mentioned, car/van rentals are the same way.

The tools are not required, despite what inflammatory articles like the Verge’s try/tried to claim. iFixIt’s guides makes it very clear that it’s possible to do the whole repair without them, and I’ve done it quite a few times in the past.

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