[fancyfredbot]

I don't entirely understand why they "didn't want to touch it"? Surely they were capable of soldering a new port. I'm sure they'd have had to charge a lot. There's unlikely to be much difference in cost between the repair and a replacement microphone.

But why not offer that? All else being equal I'd rather fix something than put it in landfill and buy a new one. Am I the only one?

[Gigachad]

Tbh they didn’t even open it up. Just decided it was too hard and gave it back. I had to follow a YouTube tutorial to work out how to open it since stuff is designed to hide all visible entry points these days.

Had I handed it to them disassembled and asked them to just solder a port on they might have accepted.

[Someone]

> I don't entirely understand why they "didn't want to touch it"?

Customer: it’s just this specific solder job

“They”: that’s what you say, but there might be other issues, and we cannot tell without spending lots of time checking things

Customer: no, it’s just a solder job.

“They”: OK, we’ll solder that, but the risk is on you, and you’ll pay regardless of the outcome.

Some time later:

“They”: operation succeeded, patient still dead.

What do you think happens next?

A: customer thanks “them” for their effort, pays and leaves

B: customer starts bickering that “they” destroyed their phone, leaves negative reviews online, etc.

I expect a significant percentage for option B. Even if that’s rare, it requires only a few negative reviews to not be worth it.

I can see people wanting to avoid that, even if it effectively leaves money on the table.

[inigyou]

Liability, and hassle. They have a few repairs they do regularly. Anything else is a risk and they don't need the money that badly. And they can't be 90% confident they'll get it right, since they don't do it regularly.

[Gigachad]

They also can’t charge if they can’t fix it. And they don’t know the extent of the damage beforehand. So they could waste an hour of labor before finding its unfixable.

In that time they could have done 3 iPhone battery replacements.