[Nextgrid]

The potential problem is that unlike your monitor or a replacement iPhone where the original still has some value, a used up battery has near-zero value and probably less than it costs to ship it back in an individual box (as opposed to dropping it off at a recycling box at your nearest supermarket). This is clearly a bad-faith effort to make stocking up on parts impossible and make the entire process more inconvenient than it needs to be.

[traceroute66]

> a used up battery has near-zero value and probably less than it costs to ship it back in an individual box

That's if you look at it on an individual quantity. In volume quantity there may be other considerations at play.

> This is clearly a bad-faith effort to make stocking up on parts impossible and make the entire process more inconvenient than it needs to be.

Give me a break !

For a start, this isn't a "parts stocking" programme, it is a self-repair programe. You obtain relevant parts on a Just-In-Time basis. Jeez !

If you want to stock parts, go become an Apple Authorised Service Provider. You even get a credit account so you don't have to pony up the cash up-front.

[Nextgrid]

> this isn't a "parts stocking" programme, it is a self-repair programe

Why can't it be both? Most existing "self-repair" programmes (before such things had to have a specific name instead of just "buying parts") such as the ones for cars work just fine on the model of "show up at the dealership, give them a part number & payment card and walk out with your new part". They don't care if you're buying these parts to repair your car now or keep it for later and managed to stay in business for decades just fine.

> You obtain relevant parts on a Just-In-Time basis.

One major advantage of a self-repair programme (as opposed to just doing the repair at Apple or an AASP directly) is that you can work around some of the logistics and make the operation quicker/more efficient.

If you are particularly careless and smash your phone frequently (or your friends do, like in my case) you can keep spares of commonly-broken parts in advance so that the actual repair process is really quick and only involves a couple hours or downtime.

Having to order parts in advance and having to return the old part in a specific timeframe means you need to schedule the entire thing and plan around the logistics of it and it can no longer be a "I have a couple hours to kill tonight, let's make my phone new again" thing, at which point you get back most of the inconveniences of doing an official repair such as scheduling it, waiting for shipping, etc. I suspect this might be the point of these restrictions.

> If you want to stock parts, go become an Apple Authorised Service Provider.

Can I become an AASP if I do one repair a month? If so sign me up!