Duty of Care- How Not to Cut Corners

Some time back, we read a story online describing a someone who needed her Apple iPhone 6S screen replaced. Unfortunately- in hindsight- she didn’t bring it to us or a more reputable store, but went to a less well-known business that shall remain nameless…

While the customer and the technician in the store disagreed on some inconsequential details, it was clear that a phone that was originally claimed to have been fixed, turned out not to be working. Worse, the store couldn’t fix it themselves, and asked the customer for another £50- in addition to the originally agreed price of £120- to have another store look at it.

The customer left the shop with a non-working phone in much worse condition than it had been originally. In fact, it was little more than a “bag of bits”- parts that hadn’t even been screwed together. It’s quite possible that a more skilled technician might have been able to fix the phone if they’d been given it in the first place, but that this shop had now pushed it beyond repair.

To cut a long story short, anyone fixing a large and varied number of devices will inevitably have something go wrong at some point. You can’t always judge how something will go before a phone, tablet or whatever is disassembled. On occasion, fixing one thing might cause another to stop working. To be fair, this isn’t always the technician’s fault or responsibility- but when it is, it’s their job to deal with it, and not to palm off the customer.

At Disc Depot, we personally take our duty of care seriously, and follow defined procedures. We also take care to manage our customers’ expectations, and explain when something is risky or might not be a success. However, if something gets damaged that is clearly due to a mistake on our part, then it’s our responsibility to sort that out.

Because we’ve invested both in staff training and in tools needed to do everything in-house, we don’t need to outsource. If something goes wrong, we can fix it ourselves.

We believe our prices are fair. They’re not always the cheapest, but that’s because they account not just for parts and labour, but also for warranty coverage, any risks we have to cover out of our own pocket, and aftercare.

Many stores set their prices too low- and their margins far too razor-thin- to allow for this. In addition to the fact they’re not really making a profit, they won’t- and can’t– cover all those other things we mentioned above. It’s not our problem that they didn’t think out their business plan to undercut more established (and reliable) businesses, but it’s your problem when they mess up your phone repair with no comeback.

In short- pay a few pounds more, and get the service you deserve!