Setting up a Storefront & Mobile Repair Business with Dean Ingraham

If it’s something where we had to do a special order part, unfortunately the only choice that we have at that point is to go ahead, check in their phone if it’s not usable, and order the part, or let them keep the phone until we can get the parts in, and then just have them return with the phone so we can switch out the part. You basically do what you can for the customer when feasible. Obviously, keeping the parts in stock make it a lot easier to be able to honor your warranties in a timely manner and obviously those phones where you have to special order the parts makes it very difficult to honor those warranties in a timely manner and make the customer happy at the same time.

Bryce Whitty: Are you finding that most of the Apple devices are outside the Apple warranty or do you find that they’re inside the Apple warranty and they just go to you anyway?

Dean Ingraham: From my understanding the warranties are automatically voided as soon as the screen is cracked. The warranty really doesn’t matter at that point, the only other option at that point it either, you can take it to a local shop or you can take it to the Apple store and get it repaired. For us, the nearest Apple store is about 2 hours away, so you can either save $50 on a iPhone 6 to get the screen replaced by driving 2 hours out of the way or you can get it done here. Most people opt to get it done here obviously. Most of the iPhones that do come in, they’re out of warranty because we get tons of iPhone 5s, 5Ss and 5Cs in here, and then of course the iPhone 6’s. It’s just a matter of, do you want to drive 2 hours out of the way or would you rather get it here locally?

Bryce Whitty: Yeah, it’s not a good use of time going 2 hours away and you can only save a tiny little bit of money. What sort of training do your guys have for the cell phone repair? For example, the Apple stuff, did you do the Apple training or did you do something like iFixit?

Dean Ingraham: My first mobile device technician, which is still with me now, I basically started him off on training him on the iPhones and the iPads. He had no experience as a technician, I didn’t have any experience as far as that area goes except for self learning. From there, ever since he got stuck in that area he’s been stuck in that area. He’s just learned every single phone that’s come in and he uses resources like YouTube, iFixit, he uses sometimes different forums online if we’re dealing with troubleshooting, but no real formal training has been given to our technicians for iPhone repair or for Android phone repair. It’s mostly just been hands-on, learn as you go. Now, all of our technicians after our senior mobile device technician, has obviously been trained by him. We have a graveyard of just phones and phones and phones, and we’ll get our technicians on those phones and they’ll tear them apart, put them back together, tear them apart, and tear them back together over and over and over again until they get comfortable with doing that before we’ll even put them on a customer’s phone.

In fact, the first phone that we’ll usually start them on is an iPhone 4 because if you can do an iPhone 4 you can pretty much do any phone after that. We’ll have them do that over and over again until we’re confident that they’re not going to lose any screws or put things in the wrong place, or screw up anything. Then once they’ve done that we’ll get them on a couple phones that maybe they weren’t going to have a bad ESN, we’ll have them do those phones a few times and then once we know that everything works, functions, we’ll start putting them on customer phones. I would say we might have a problem with a phone were it goes dead or we lose a major function once or twice a year. Our rate of having issues with these phones is very low.

Bryce Whitty: How do you handle when a client’s phone does die on your operating table? How do you handle that, even if it’s not necessarily your fault, how do you handle that?

Dean Ingraham: We have a disclaimer form that each customer signs for the repairs, basically stating that, “Hey, you’re bringing us a broken device. There’s always a possibility of other damage, especially if it’s bent.” We explain to them the different circumstances that could happen, that while we’ll take every precaution possible there’s always a possibility that while everything may work now, something may not work later. Of course, we’ll test everything in front of the customer, we have a checklist of things that we check on the phone, and if we find any issues right away we’ll show them before we even start on the repairs. Even though our disclaimer says that, “Hey, we’re not responsible if there’s any damages.” Honestly, we pretty much will still buy the customer a brand new phone if it really boils down to it.

Most of the time, the times that we do end up running with issues is usually when someone brings in a completely dead or completely trashed phone that you can’t even test anything in the first place. Then we get a new screen on there or we fix whatever the problem is, or what we think the problem is, and it still doesn’t work. At that point it’s pretty clear that, “Hey, there’s a good chance it wasn’t going to work anyways.” Therefore at that point, usually the customer understands and they don’t have any problem with that. At that point we don’t replace those phones, but if a phone came in and it was functioning properly and it just had a cracked screen, if something happened to where we caused it to not work or there’s no proof as to whether or not we did, usually we’ll just replace it. It really just depends on the situation.

Bryce Whitty: If you do put a screen on say, one of those ones that come in fairly dead, and eventually determine it doesn’t work, do you still charge for the labor and the screen or you just say, “Oh, don’t worry about it” and you eat the cost?

Dean Ingraham: I’m a firm believer in not doing anything for free, pretty much. Any phone that comes in that does not display or power on, one or the other, in other words if I can’t test a phone, even if it just means the digitizer doesn’t work, we will actually charge a diagnostic up front. That’s $50, and that diagnostic does go towards the cost of repairs. For instance, for an iPhone 5, we charge $97. If they come in with a screen that’s completely busted and we can’t test everything we would charge $50 up front and then they would pay the remaining $47 plus tax when they come pick it back up. 9 times out of 10 as soon as we replace that screen it’s going to work perfectly fine anyways.
As long as you explain that but also be very clear about the fact there’s a possibility that there could be other issues and you can’t verify one way or the other until you have actually replaced that screen, they understand and there’s usually no issues if there is a problem with their phone. When it comes to cell phone repair, to be honest with you, I can count probably on one finger how many times I’ve had a customer complain about that. I think people understand, the fact is in order for me to determine whether or not I can fix your phone, I literally have to fix your phone. If it doesn’t work, I have to basically put your old crap screen back on there which means it’s going to take me twice as long. If you want me to even attempt it, I’m going to have to get paid for my time. Most people don’t argue with that, they seem to understand that.

Bryce Whitty: It sounds like it’s all about managing expectations, even if it’s not going to work there’s a good chance … You charge anyway so I guess you’re covered. Managing expectations seems to be the important thing. They’ll probably still have to pay even if it’s dead.

Dean Ingraham: Yeah, and as long as you’re up front and honest with them, usually it’s not an issue. It is all about managing expectations. If you can’t do that you’re going to have a lot of angry customers.

Bryce Whitty: To rehash this a little bit, you said that systems and checklists and disclaimers are extremely important. It allows you to train your guys and basically be able to duplicate yourself at the other location pretty easily. Also, that the looks of the place is crazy important as we mentioned before, that it’s almost an auto filter of people. You get people that want that level and people who are looking for a $25 repair are just going to look at your place and as that person said it’s like, “Ooh, let’s go. This place is going to be too expensive.” You also mentioned that if you do enough cell phone, mobile, tablet, that sort of thing repair, it can be more profitable than actually computer repairs. Mac repairs, you said is fairly worth it. I’d imagine that’s largely because people, they’re generally a bit more of a premium customer. They’re used to paying $2,000 plus for their MacBook. You say you handle premium PC’s so people who are willing to pay the extra, is that right with the PCs?

Dean Ingraham: For the Macs, like you said, one of the main reasons why it’s more profitable is because people are willing to pay more, but with the Macs, actually most of the repairs are generally way easier than PC repairs. A virus removal on a Mac is way easier than a virus removal on a PC for instance. Re-install is way less consuming on a Mac than it is on a PC. Right now we charge for PC repairs as premium as we can, but because it still is a major portion of our business we’re still probably more expensive than everybody else, but not as expensive as we could be. Once we do make the transition to marketing ourselves more towards mobile devices and Macs, that will change. Our PC repairs will definitely go up as a premium.

Bryce Whitty: Are you guys looking at manage services at all?

Dean Ingraham: I’ve been back and forth on this idea of going business to business and doing networks and servers, and manage services, and everything that’s involved in that. The more and more I look at it and the more and more I see how my business is changing, the more I think to myself, “I’m not going to,” because the fact of the matter is, I don’t have any network or server experience, or any help desk experience, which I know most of that is pretty basic. I don’t have any desire to learn it, and without having that experience it’s very difficult for me to hire someone that does and know that they know what they’re talking about and what they’re doing, or even as others on technical had pointed out to me, how am I going to price the jobs? How am I going to price once project from another? I could, but honestly I’m probably not going to. I think I’m going to stay with the niche that we’re working with, the mobile devices and Macs and doing PCs at a premium, and build the business on that focus point, and basically leave it at that. Refer out any type MSP or business work out to somebody else that can do it better than we can.

Bryce Whitty: With the cell phone and all that, sort of keep it a really tight operation, with the checklists and also make sure you’re getting paid and set yourself up as a premium person, because if you don’t you’re probably not going to be earning enough and not going to make enough money.

Dean Ingraham: Right. Yeah, I will say one thing that’s a little bit different with premium pricing, cell phone repair, especially cell phone repair, in the consumer’s eyes, it’s a commodity. So is computer repair but it’s a lot easier to convince a customer that there’s a difference in quality when it comes to a computer repair simply because it takes longer to do, than it does for a cell phone repair. As far as the consumer is concerned, a screen replacement is a screen replacement. What’s the difference whether or not I get it done here or whether or not I get it done there? At least in my perspective I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not always best to be the most expensive when it comes to cell phone repair. Instead, sometimes it’s more important to get the volume. It really just depends on what you’re doing, but without that volume you’re not going to see that profit either.

Bryce Whitty: Volume it is, keep it moving and make sure that you’re pushing off people out the door. Do you try and get extra money out of those people? Do you push really hard to sell the cases to those people?

Dean Ingraham: Yeah. Here’s one thing that really helps us compared to other shops. For instance, an iPhone 5, everybody knows that they get dented up and bent really easily as well as the 6’s and 6+’s, so you have to break out your G tool or you have to physically bend that frame back out so that the screen fits in there properly and of course, doesn’t cause any other issues. The great thing about that is that it actually gives you opportunity to make more money. I don’t know of any other shop that does this, but what we do is we price ourselves just a little bit lower than the competition when it comes to cell phone repair, at least on the iPhone 5’s and the 6’s. Then we get the people coming in and once they come in, if we got bent corners or dented corners and we got to take a dremel tool to it, or we got to take a G tool to it, we immediately tell them, “Hey, it’s going to be $97 for the screen replacement on this iPhone 5, but you’re housing also has to be repaired so that’s going to be an additional $25.”
Most of the time, nobody even blinks an eye, they just go ahead and pay for it and they’re done. Most of the time they completely understand that you have to put extra time and labor into that housing, especially when you say something to the effect of, “The alternative is basically replacing your housing for another $100.” Obviously, they’d rather spend that 25 rather than that 100. We do things like that that actually help us get more money out of the repair while still technically being cheaper than the competition. Then of course, we sell cases and screen protectors and accessories. We currently sell those accessories at 10% off as long as you’re getting a repair done. That definitely helps get those up-sells and that’s probably our biggest up-sell when it comes to cell phones.

Bryce Whitty: That’s a great way to make a little bit of extra money. It’s pull them in with it being cheaper than everyone else, and catch them on the back end, with the extra casings and the extra parts.

Dean Ingraham: Yeah, and it works well. In the last 5 months, of all the iPhone 5’s and 6’s that we’ve done, of those that needed housing repair it probably comes out to about 5 to 7,000 dollars of extra income that we wouldn’t have made if we didn’t charge for that service.

Bryce Whitty: Yeah, I think a lot of technicians, they don’t want to feel like a used car salesman. They don’t really quite know how to sell but I guess when you’re selling a case right after you’ve repaired a smashed screen, it’s just the absolute easiest sale. It’s just like, “Well, if you don’t want this sort of thing to happen again, then we got these cases which are really good. They’ll protect your phone,” that sort of stuff. You don’t have to feel like a used car salesman, it’s just so easy.

Dean Ingraham: Yeah, and even with the housing repair for instance. Doing that repair, you’re spending additional time on that repair. You’re taking a 15 minute repair and sometimes adding an additional 15, 20 minutes to that repair just fixing the housing so you can fit that screen in there. Not only are you spending more time that you should be getting paid for, but the customer gets the benefit of having a fixed housing that’s not going to crack the screen at a 2 foot drop, at least it’s not likely to. Whereas if you didn’t fix that housing and you squished that screen in there, the slightest bump is probably going to crack it.

Bryce Whitty: Coming up just at over an hour now, thank you so much for sharing everything with us and for everyone that’s listening, I’m going to be putting to the website and you can see how really nice looking his stores are. They really do look great and it does show that image really is everything. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing that with us.

Dean Ingraham: No problem.

Bryce Whitty: Thank you very much Dean. That was Dean Ingraham of The Computer Exchange, one of the extremely knowledgeable members of the Technibble forums. If you’re not a member of the Technibble forums then you are seriously missing out. You can visit the Technibble forums at technibble.com/forums. Thank you so much for listening and I really hope you enjoyed the show. This is Bryce Whitty from Technibble.com.

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