[DanielHB]

Brazilian person here, when I moved to Europe I was baffled I couldn't find shops that fixed electronics. Like I wanted to get my Android phone charging port replaced, I literally couldn't find a shop in my city willing to do the repair.

I eventually went back to Brazil and had it fixed there and replaced the battery. Freaking phone lasted 8 years on my very clumsly hands, still works even. The fix cost me ~30 usd plus the battery cost.

[carlosjobim]

Somebody who has the skills to fix electronics will be working with fixing devices which are much more expensive and critical than cell phones.

Industrial dishwasher breaks down? You need to get an electrician there ASAP.

Cell phone breaks down? Throw it away and buy a new one.

Brazil has very low salaries for skilled workers, so it makes sense that it's cheap to find somebody to fix your phone.

[MrsPeaches]

Note that mobile phone repair is the no. 1 service provided by repair shops in rural areas of many countries in Africa.

Like 50%+ of all repairs are mobile phone repairs

[marcosdumay]

Yes, it's something extremely valuable, an expensive portable, and the new models all just keep getting worse and worse. There's no reason not to fix them.

It's also a repair that demands some amount of training. I imagine people fix a lot of things without getting them to a shop.

[carlosjobim]

Hackers are down voting my comment. My question to them: If you could get paid twice the salary per hour to repair expensive machines, would you spend your time repairing mobile phones?

Everybody wants that juicy, juicy cheap labour, but nobody wants to be the cheap worker.

[marcosdumay]

Do you think US people capable of fixing phones make more than the ~$600/hour they can add in value by fixing phones there?

[fn-mote]

No. Fixing modern phones requires a lot of specialized equipment.

You need to be able to fix microscopic flaws in soldering.

There are locked-down components that you cannot replace.

Here is a referenece: https://www.ipadrehab.com/index.cfm?Page=About

[carlosjobim]

If nobody is offering cell phone repair services, that means repairing cell phones is not profitable enough compared to other things the person can do with their time. Otherwise people would offer these services.

[marcosdumay]

Two economists were walking when they spotted a $100 bill. One asked the other "should one of us pick it up?", the other replied "no, if there was a $100 bill there, somebody would have picked it up already", so they kept walking.

Not even the joke is funny. People repeating it seriously is even less so.

Anyway, you would be right if you are trying to claim that the repairmen isn't the party maintaining the irrational situation, so they are powerless to fix it.

[carlosjobim]

Then put your money where your mouth is and open as many cell phone repair shops in Europe as you please. You can mortgage your house and borrow a bunch of money if you need to get started.

But I think that there is always some reason or another why nobody is offering a service which seems to have great demand among customers.

[aoeusnth1]

No, it's extremely easy and routine to fix cell phones. You could train teenagers to do it.

[carlosjobim]

And you can train those teenagers to do things which are much more profitable. If they have the dexterity and other skills needed to work on cell phone electronics, then they can work on other electronics.

If it was a good business, then there would be cell phone repair shops on every corner in Europe, like you have in other parts of the world where that makes sense.