Five questions to ask yourself before taking you Apple iPhone to a High Street repair shop

Is there a shop, kiosk or market stall in your town that sells phone cases and novelties with a flashy LED sign promising to repair mobile phones, replace screens or unlock phones?

Before you run down to that shop and hand over your precious, broken iPhone or iPad in the hope that they’ll get it working, just ask yourself these five questions.

1. Do they know what they’re doing?

Is this shop staffed, so far as you know, by qualified, insured engineers with years of expertise? Or is it, more likely, staffed by a competent but uncertified self-taught shop owner who makes the majority of his income selling spares and accessories on eBay?

Some might accuse us of being snooty, but when you’ve spent years studying to earn the credentials to work on mobile phone and smart device technology, it’s galling to think that someone with a laptop and a market stall is telling people that you’re all in the same business.

Does your local mobile phone shop’s front window scream “Professional, competent and successful”? Or is it telling a different story?

2. Can I trust them with my phone?

If you don’t have a friend or family member who can recommend a local repair shop based on personal experience, you could try trustatrader.com, checkatrade.com or Google but in our experience, you’ll find very, very few repair shops with a long list of reviews from satisfied customers. Much more common is to find they’re not listed in any legitimate directories at all.

There are doubtless plenty of good repair companies in British High Streets. Your local repair shop could be completely trustworthy and professional. But if your phone is precious to you, you can’t afford to take any risks. With Gadget Lab you know that any work done on your phone will be carried out by trained professionals who don’t do anything all day except work on mobile phones and other related smart technology.

It pays to go to a specialist company staffed by qualified engineers instead of a second-hand phone shop run by an entrepeneur

3. How long will it take?

You might be in a hurry and you’re worried that sending your phone to us by Royal Mail will just add an unnecessary delay to the whole process. You’re probably thinking that you could get your phone repaired while you wait and be using it again by the end of the day.

But what are the chances that your local repair shop has the correct replacement part for your phone or tablet? Either they’ll have to take it off your hands while they wait for a part to be delivered or, worse still, they’ll palm you off with a low-cost generic part that may not be fully compatible with your device.

At Gadget Lab we keep spare parts in stock and if we don’t have the right part for your phone, we can get it very quickly. When you come to Gadget Lab for repairs, you’ll get the best quality replacement parts and they’ll be installed by qualified technicians. We recommend that you send your device to us by Royal mail Special Delivery, so if you put it in the post today, we’ll have it by tomorrow. And we’ll return it to you by Special Delivery, too. We can’t promise we’ll be quicker than the local repair shop but we’ll be as quick as we can. Sometimes it’s better to do something right than do it quickly.

We can’t promise we’ll be quicker than the local repair shop but we’ll be as quick as we can. Sometimes it’s better to do something right than do it quickly

4. What if it goes wrong?

At Gadget Lab we can’t guarantee that we’ll fix your phone — every incident is a little different and sadly sometimes a broken phone has to stay broken. But we can promise that when you get it back, it won’t be in a worse condition than when you sent it to us.

And don’t say it couldn’t happen. If you’re unlucky, you might end up like one of the contributors to techdissected.com whose phone was badly damaged when he took it to a local repair shop. “The sides of the device looked horrible, as they had obviously been prying and prodding at it like wild animals,” he wrote of his experience. “There were actual holes where dust and other random objects could get inside the phone.”

Seriously, what’s the best place to have your phone repaired — in a lab, with an expert, or in the back room of a corner shop?

5. What’s it going to cost?

We charge a fair and competitive price for our data recovery and phone repair services. Gadget Lab might not be cheaper than your local mobile phone repair shop, but have you ever heard the expression “if you think it’s expensive hiring professional, wait till you hire an amateur”?

Sometimes you owe it to yourself not to cut corners and if your mobile phone is precious to you, this is one of those times. If you try to repair it yourself or leave it in the care of someone who isn’t fully qualified, it might be too late for Gadget Lab to step in and save the day.

Header photo credit Timo. Other photos DGJones Liskabub Finlandia_175 ƒliçkrwåy