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Leaked Apple Training Videos Show How It Undermines Third-Party Repair:
Leaked training videos Apple made for its authorized repair partners show how the company trains repair technicians to undermine third party companies and talk customers into buying more expensive first party repairs.
[...] The training videos are meant to help Apple’s certified repair stores navigate a world where customers can get replacement parts far cheaper than what Apple charges for basic repairs. For years, Apple has made it harder for independent repair stores to fix phones, nudging customers to go to Apple stores instead. In response, there's been a rising right-to-repair movement that wants to make it easier for people to repair their own stuff.
Andrey Shumeyko, a member of a community of Apple enthusiasts that seek, publicize, and trade any kind of information that Apple would like to keep under wraps, sent the eight videos with Motherboard. The videos are not public, as they are only intended for Apple store employees and authorized independent repair technicians (these are called Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASP). Shumeyko said the videos were stored on an Apple platform, where a bug allowed him to access them without having to provide a login.
AASP launched in 2016 as a way for some independent stores to make basic repairs to Apple devices. AASP stores must open their stores to unannounced audits by Apple, and face a mountain of restrictions on what they can and can’t fix.
[...] Fixing your own stuff or having an independent store do it can be much cheaper than going directly to Apple. Contrary to what Apple said in the training videos, the parts are often exactly the same. Factories will often overproduce Apple parts like screens then sell the excess to independent vendors. If color calibration is off or the light doesn’t get quite as bright as it did before, it’s often because Apple has software locks and calibration profiles it could release to make repairs easier but refuses to.
Every video in the training series is aimed at boosting the morale of Apple’s AASPs and training them to convince customers to spend more when they could spend less.
"As someone who works as an Apple Authorized repair technician, I see on a daily basis how many devices the manufacturer claims are unrepairable but that third party repair shops have shown time and again that they can solve, letting people recover precious documents and memories that, because of manufacturer restrictions, I am not allowed to help with,” an AASP told Motherboard on the condition we keep them anonymous because they fear retaliation from Apple.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @07:01PM (3 children)
Apple's leaked training videos are TELLING THE TRUTH; this isn't news to anyone!
Louis Rossmann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B18NhlBSjQc [youtube.com]
I guess the point he is making is that, when it comes to screen repairs, letting Apple fix it is less risky than using a third party repair shop.
He kinda goes into saying that, way back when, this wasn't the case because you were able to replace a broken screen with an exact OEM replacement. Then vendors like Apple started making identical OEM screens unavailable and so you now have to buy less reliable knock-offs that have issues. There are less expensive, less reliable, knock-offs and more expensive, more reliable, knock-offs but, compared to an OEM replacement, they're less reliable. It would be up to the repair shop to warranty the replacement but it would be better if vendors didn't go out of their way to make it more difficult to find OEM replacement parts because this incurs additional costs and risks upon the vendors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @07:14PM (1 child)
As a side note, also worth mentioning is that, with some iPads like the iPad mini 4 the thing is glued together. So taking it apart is risky and also trying to put it back may require trying to glue it back and this can be difficult and if you can even get it glued back sometimes the screen would look weird and have various issues and sometimes it may fall back apart and become unglued like a week or a month or a few months or even a year later.
Someone I know dropped their iPad mini 4 and the power button is stuck inside and doesn't work and so when I asked a few people/called a few local repair shops at least that's what they told me.
That's ridiculous and is probably done intentionally just to make you buy a new one. Then these companies claim to care about the environment, roflol.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @07:32PM
(also re-gluing it requires removing the original glue first and re-gluing something is never the same is what I was told).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @07:17PM
because this incurs additional costs and risks upon the repair shops *