There aren’t a lot of worse feelings than having your iPod suddenly die, but you’ll feel a lot worse if you decide to repair it and you get a huge bill back. Immediately, you’ll suspect that the repair company you’re using is trying to rip you off–and they might be. Here are a few tips for finding a trustworthy repair center to use when you need to get parts of your iPod repaired or replaced.
1. Have a good idea what’s wrong with the iPod. Before you send the iPod in, you should have a pretty decent idea of what’s wrong with it. I’ve written numerous articles on this website explaining how you can diagnose different types of iPod failure, but most of the time you can pretty much assume it’s either the hard drive, the electronics, or the battery–most of the errors that the iPod shows indicate hard drive issues, and you should be able to use the process of elimination to decide if you’re dealing with any of the other possible issues. If you know what needs to be replaced, it’s easier to get quotes without actually sending your iPod into multiple repair centers and try to find a good cost for repair.
2. Read user reviews. People tend to write reviews when they’re mad, not when they’re happy, so you can read about the worst aspects of a certain repair center by doing a Google search for their name and “reviews.” Beware shops that don’t have any reviews, because they’re likely to be either too inexperienced to fix all iPod problems or a scam. No site’s going to have all positive reviews, but read the negative ones carefully and look for shops with a history of good service that works to fix problems when they do come up.
3. Don’t pay much for an evaluation. If the iPod repair center you’re looking at offers some sort of evaluation before fixing the iPod (beware of a repair center that doesn’t offer such a service), you shouldn’t pay more than about $20 for the evaluation. The cost of the evaluation relates to the cost of the service pretty accurately.
4. Stay with established companies. The longer a company’s been around doing iPod repair, the better the chance that they’re doing things right and not ripping off their customers. I use companies like Rapid Repair and iPodResQ, which haven’t paid me to say that (though if they’d like to pay me since I already said that, uh, contat me). Try to find a company that’s been around for at least five years or so.
Do you have any other tips for finding a trustworthy iPod repair center? Post in our comments section below.
