This sounds exactly like the complaints the "authorized Mac dealers" had with Apple years ago, before Apple even had retail stores.
They've certainly been down this road before.... Apple has waffled back and forth on how receptive it is to allowing outside repair or upgrades to its products. You can even see evidence of this by the different design choices over the years - where Apple went back and forth between making machines fairly easy to open up and disassemble, and epoxying things in place, fastening lids down with tamper-resistant screws, etc.
As someone who has run my own small business doing on-site computer service and consulting for "all makes and models"? I've never thought it was wise to pursue becoming "Apple authorized" for service work. It just makes little sense to partner up with a company who directly competes with you, doing service themselves. If you need access to repair parts, it's my experience that they can almost always be obtained someplace on the Internet -- even if it means ordering from some guy on eBay.
There's a strong upside to doing it this way anyway .... far better prices on the parts, which can be passed along as savings to the client.
Anything Apple sells that's so new, you can't get your hands on parts for it without being "authorized" should really still be under the factory warranty, and not something people should be paying you to fix for them.
As I said before:
This is part of Apple's consolidation of control of its products.
ie. No one else, but Apple is allowed to service Apple products (at least according to Apple).
[doublepost=1485380326][/doublepost]I think you touched on an important point that goes for retail in general. As much as people love to try to support "the little guy"? In today's business world, it doesn't make sense for many small stores to even try to do what they do. The bigger players have the purchasing power to get prices down (and to negotiate better arrangements for return or exchange of the goods that come back to them from customers). Just because John Q. Public loves Macs, or cameras, or stereo systems, or whatever it is doesn't mean he has the money set aside to launch an effective retail store to compete.
Everyone talks about the "added value" of customer service a small shop can give you that a big one can't. But that's one of those things that sounds good in theory more than it works out in practice. If the small store is taking a hit on merchandise it buys, stocks, sells, and then has to accept returns on when a customer breaks it (or claims "it was broken like this when I opened it") ... then it won't be in business long if it keeps providing good customer service, happily returning or exchanging those things.
I saw this, first-hand, with the corner computer stores. (I used to work as a tech for a couple of them.) If you took the hard line stance with customers about returns that you NEEDED to take, to ensure you weren't just eating the full cost of each return yourself -- you angered customers and caused them to leave and badmouth you. (People would, for example, buy a new motherboard from us ... build a PC with it, and then claim it was defective in some way. Maybe it really was? But when they returned it, they OFTEN neglected to give us back everything that came in the box. Maybe a manual was missing, or some of the original packaging inside the box was gone... whatever. They expected it should be "good enough" to count as a return, but the manufacturers wouldn't let US send the stuff back for credit when it was "incomplete" in their eyes.) They tend not to pull those stunts on big chain stores due to the volume of sales involved.
It ain't easy. That's why so many of them don't last. When you're entirely dependent on one company for your survival it can be tough. I try to buy small and local/independent when it makes sense. $10-20 difference, I'll buy from the little guy depending on the item. Retail? I have an aversion to paying retail pricing. The Best Buys of the world can afford to give great deals because they aren't solely dependent on one manufacturer. I've found they're much easier to bargain with since the little guy usually doesn't have as much wiggle room.
