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That’s absolute nonsense. There are plenty of fantastic service engineers (many ex Apple techs) that have set up shop to cater for a cheaper/more reasonable option.

The way things are going at the moment, third party is the only choice for many.

Just make sure your 3rd party has a good rep and just make sure that rep is founded.
Agreed nonsense.
 
Apple told me that if they found a third party battery in my phone when I took it in 29th Dec they would just close it all up and hand it back to me!

Luckily wasn’t the case ;)
 
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