Recently, Apple officially launched the self-service/ self-service repair service, which has been the first to open in the United States, and the supported devices include the iPhone 12 series, the iPhone 13 series, and the iPhone SE3.
At the same time, Apple provides a special official website, users can consult maintenance information, as well as buy and rent maintenance tools, but the tools are not cheap, a set of tools including all the tools supported by the iPhone rental for $49 a week (about 300 yuan).
In our minds, self-service repairs tend to be cheaper than official repairs, which eliminate manual costs, but this does not seem to be the case.
Dan Barbera, a videographer from MacRumors, tested Apple's self-service repair service and rented an Apple repair kit and a battery pack on the official self-service website.
He then received the package, in which the Apple repair kit had two separate packages weighing 79 pounds (about 36kg) and needed to be shipped back to Apple within a week, otherwise it would be charged up to $1300 (about 8600 yuan).
Then there's the iPhone 12 mini, which needs to replace the battery, with a battery pack of $70.99, $24.15 for sending back old parts, and $95.84 (about $630) for Dan's self-service repair.
But what is more embarrassing is that compared to the self-service repair service, Apple's official replacement battery is only $69 (about 456 yuan), which is obviously cheaper, and does not need to take risks, and the time is faster.
For the repair process, Dan said that this is not easy, even if Apple has the relevant instructions and tools, but the official maintenance kit still lacks some of the tools required by the manual, such as tweezers and thermal protective gloves.
Although users can choose not to rent a repair kit, the difficulty of repair may increase and it is not suitable for ordinary users.
Apple's self-service will expand support for Mac products equipped with M1 processors before the end of the year, and open to the European market, whether it will be launched in China is temporarily unknown.