Let's assume that all iPhones that are "repaired" by an Apple Store are actually replaced by the Apple Store. This matches my experience - go in with broken phone, walk out with brand new identical phone.
Then assume all the old phones are shipped to India/Vietnam/Sri Lanka/China where apple pays the smallest achievable wages for laborers to either:
1) swap out the broken displays, mainboards, etc. to produce a working "Refurbished" unit. Who does Apple sell these to? I don't see refurbished phones for sale on their website. Maybe to T-Mobile/etc who do sell some refurbished iPhones.
or
2) Disassemble the unit, throwing out everything except 100% known-good components, which get used for...what? Maybe new iPhones? Would apple ever include refurbished components...probably not. What do they do with all these known good but used components?
Either way, you can imagine that Apple might only be paying $10 or so to ship all these phones in a giant container to Asia and $20 or so for the labor of repair/disassembly. So maybe the "Self Service Part" really is being offered at the same materials price, minus Apple's straight internal labor cost.
I somewhat doubt this, but it's at least plausible.
> Let's assume that all iPhones that are "repaired" by an Apple Store are actually replaced by the Apple Store. This matches my experience - go in with broken phone, walk out with brand new identical phone.
That used to be very common if not the default (this was my experience too, would always just get a replacement), but these days I believe they actually do a lot of common repairs in stores in a relatively short period of time (screen / back / button / battery replacements), etc.
I think your onto the right track here with the way Apple probably treats repairs but I can't imagine that the parts actually cost this much. Maybe for some specific things it would be decently high (processor, display) but $311 to self repair a screen seems a bit ridiculous when tons of other phones can have a very nice OLED screen put in for much, much less.
> 1) swap out the broken displays, mainboards, etc. to produce a working "Refurbished" unit. Who does Apple sell these to? I don't see refurbished phones for sale on their website. Maybe to T-Mobile/etc who do sell some refurbished iPhones.
available through Apple at https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/iphone. I think availability changes frequently, only see iPhone 11 Pro currently but have seen others in the past.
I once had to do a screen replacement (dropped phone).
They did the swap out. I was on applecare if that matters.
It was something like $30 which seemed very reasonable. I walked out in maybe 15 minutes? This was a long time ago, and I lived a few blocks from an apple store.
My GF was amazed though (her family was on android) because at the time their approved / store repair options were pretty much nonexistent so they often would tape a screen with a crack etc.
I've gone years now without a cracked screen, so they are definitely tougher than they used to be (I don't always use a case etc).
Then assume all the old phones are shipped to India/Vietnam/Sri Lanka/China where apple pays the smallest achievable wages for laborers to either:
1) swap out the broken displays, mainboards, etc. to produce a working "Refurbished" unit. Who does Apple sell these to? I don't see refurbished phones for sale on their website. Maybe to T-Mobile/etc who do sell some refurbished iPhones.
or
2) Disassemble the unit, throwing out everything except 100% known-good components, which get used for...what? Maybe new iPhones? Would apple ever include refurbished components...probably not. What do they do with all these known good but used components?
Either way, you can imagine that Apple might only be paying $10 or so to ship all these phones in a giant container to Asia and $20 or so for the labor of repair/disassembly. So maybe the "Self Service Part" really is being offered at the same materials price, minus Apple's straight internal labor cost.
I somewhat doubt this, but it's at least plausible.