Make money from repairing devices?

[Samir9644]

I've seen many broken screen/broken panel/not working properly iphones, then i thought, is repairing iphones/ipods/ipads profitable ?

i saw guides on a website, with pictures and tips and everything required to repair a device, unfortunately, my brother broke his LCD screen withought braking the outer glass in his Sony Xperia J. so i searched for an iphone 4/4s with a broken screen/not working properly, i've found an iphone 4 with a working LCD screen but camera isn't working. what do you think ? should i buy it ?
note: they want about 87$ for it, its ther lowest price i could find, i think its pretty much low.

also, i have found an OEM camera replacement for 5$.

what do you think ?

 

[ross1998]

I've seen many broken screen/broken panel/not working properly iphones, then i thought, is repairing iphones/ipods/ipads profitable ?

i saw guides on a website, with pictures and tips and everything required to repair a device, unfortunately, my brother broke his LCD screen withought braking the outer glass in his Sony Xperia J. so i searched for an iphone 4/4s with a broken screen/not working properly, i've found an iphone 4 with a working LCD screen but camera isn't working. what do you think ? should i buy it ?
note: they want about 87$ for it, its ther lowest price i could find, i think its pretty much low.

also, i have found an OEM camera replacement for 5$.

what do you think ?

I wouldn't buy a broken iphone 4 for 87 dollars...

 

[Samir9644]

I wouldn't buy a broken iphone 4 for 87 dollars...

how much should i buy it ?

 

[Crichton333]

how much should i buy it ?

I did a quick ebay search and you can find iPhone 4 from $25 to $75, I mean the low end ones that go for $20 are most likely the broken ones but look good on pics.

 

[617aircav]

When you repair these phones will you let potential customers know that are repaired by you?

 

[Jalopybox]

There is always more to the damaged phone than listed. Many times they become a nightmare. Not worth it.

And you are not getting a real OEM part unless it was taken from a working phone.

 

[960design]

I've seen many broken screen/broken panel/not working properly iphones, then i thought, is repairing iphones/ipods/ipads profitable ?

We repair iPad glass in house. We currently have a little over 2600 iPads deployed and have about a little less than a 1% breakage rate. So we repair about 25-30 glass per year.

You certainly could make money repairing glass. Two shops down the road charge $150 to repair iPad glass, where the glass itself only costs about $45. $100 for about 30 minutes work isn't too shabby.

Purchasing devices to repair and resell would be too risky and expensive for me to take on.

 

[Jalopybox]

We repair iPad glass in house. We currently have a little over 2600 iPads deployed and have about a little less than a 1% breakage rate. So we repair about 25-30 glass per year.

You certainly could make money repairing glass. Two shops down the road charge $150 to repair iPad glass, where the glass itself only costs about $45. $100 for about 30 minutes work isn't too shabby.

Purchasing devices to repair and resell would be too risky and expensive for me to take on.

After watching how it's done, I don't think $100 is out of line for the labor.

 

[Samir9644]

i want to repair devices without buying them, because when buying a broken lcd screen, you don't want to be scamed by a stolen/not working device. so i will just repair device, not buy and then sell.

extra money isn't bad, its just a 30 minutes job.

 

[960design]

After watching how it's done, I don't think $100 is out of line for the labor.

You are correct. At first we thought, what the heck, lets save some money, we can do this. The first one took me 2 hours, all the little bits of glass, insane. When I got it all back together I noticed I completely hacked up the little plastic bezel that surrounds the glass. It looked awful. After a couple dozen, you get pretty good. The last one I did, somehow the original tape was stuck to the power/volume/mute cable. When I gently pulled the glass away it damaged the cable. NOW that is a huge pain to fix. The cable only costs about $2US, but repairing took 3 hours. It is connected to everything and actually lies in a channel that is upside down for a bit.

$100 is definitely a fair asking price.

 

[kilcher]

I would say not worth it. I replaced the screen on my wife's iPhone 4 and you couldn't pay me enough to do it again. It's fairly hard to do - there are about 20 different super small screws and they're all slightly different in size. I ended up having to put all of the screws in a bag and didn't know which went where so that didn't help. To replace the screen on the 4/4S you need to remove EVERYTHING. It's not fun. From what I understand the 5/5S and I assume the 5C are much easier.

What I would do if you're interested in that sort of thing is see if you can find some broken phones people are willing to sell for cheap. You could then try to fix them and resell them. That way if you can't fix it you're not out much and you've learned a bit. You don't have the pressure of being accountable to a customer who is relying on you to get their most prized posession back to pristine like-new condition. Start as a hobby, get some experience, see if it's something you're good and and want to expand upon.

Or if you wanted to limit it to the 5/5S/5C you may be able to make some extra money with fairly easy repairs. A co-worker looked up how to replace the glass on his Galaxy and it looks pretty easy too. If you're going to do it as a side business maybe start out limiting it to phones that are easier.