Battery replacement nightmare

Submitted by NoSoulRequired t3_zt9f28 in iphone

I just had a repair shop bend me over last week. To clarify, it’s the only phone repair shop in my area and the closest Apple Store to me is roughly 2 hours away. My daughter has a iPhone 11 which the battery used to state service and said it was severely degraded and needed a replacement percentage was at 67% or 77% can’t remember which but it needed a new battery so called the closest repair shop to me inquired price which was $5 more than what Apple would’ve charged me but they were 10 minutes away from my home vs the Apple Store which again is 2 hrs away. I received my daughters iPhone back with a “new” battery which also was accompanied with a new error message that will forever state “unknown” part and battery health will never show again. Apple won’t touch it themselves for any reason at all now. If the repair shop would’ve told me this prior or whenever we were dropping her phone off to them if they would’ve mentioned anything of the sort, then I would’ve never let them “fix” my daughters phone & would’ve just went to Apple. Is there any sort of recourse that can be taken in this unfortunate situation ?

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Interesting-Dish8894 t1_j1dafr8 wrote

I would never have an iPhone repaired anywhere other than at Apple; two hours away or not

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Snappy-Otter t1_j1cwwfj wrote

Battery is probably perfectly fine, but nongenuine iPhone batteries don’t have the health features.

Install CoconutBattery app on a Mac, connect your iPhone with a lightning cable and check the battery info.

Ask the third-party repair shop if there is any chance to replace that battery with a genuine one.

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NoSoulRequired OP t1_j1dz82a wrote

They apparently don’t have the “updates” to fix the battery health & the error message on some battery machine. Probably one that copies the old bcm to new bcm. I asked. Then asked why we weren’t told any of this information prior and was hung up on so.

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B7ues t1_j1dhmlg wrote

apples to apples. everyone knows this- when buying apple products. cmon

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NoSoulRequired OP t1_j1dytmq wrote

I wasn’t aware. I take care of my phones and never had to worry about replacing anything until this whole battery situation. Like I said in the post if I would’ve known that’s how they would’ve returned it I would’ve never got them to “fix” it. Lesson learned.

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nitroben2 t1_j1eicqa wrote

Yep, unfortunately they probably foods know this less than perfect replacement would be the result, but they aren't going to tell you that exactly because of what you said here. If you knew they would use 3rd party parts without full feature compatibility instead of genuine apple parts you would have taken the extra time to go through apple certified repairs, and you definitely would not have paid more for these 3rd party parts. Unfortunately you don't know what you don't know until you learn about it.

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NoSoulRequired OP t1_j1esss1 wrote

Correct. I honestly had no idea, last I replaced a battery was when I had like the 7 or 8 plus many years ago and this unknown part mess didn’t exist then, I mean if I had more time I would’ve ordered and replaced the battery myself for half the price and gotten the same results but with the addition I personally would’ve been able to remove bcm chip off of old battery & fix it to the new at the very least. I mean honestly kinda glad it was only just a iPhone 11 and not one of our 13pm cause I’ll never take any phone I ever need fixed or even recommend their business to anyone ever again.. will gladly mail my phone in before I ever choose to do a 3rd party shop ever again. Was honestly just hoping someone here could tell me some sort of recourse I could take on the situation because I feel what they have done is wrong. I’m sure it would just be a civil suit against them, but mainly, I’m wanting to prevent them from being able to do this to future unknowledgeable potential customers! I’m pretty sure they are supposed to give some kind of disclaimer explaining if not signing something to make sure this isn’t an issue. If this was your daughters phone & she was complaining about it anyone would be just as upset as I am about it, because now it’s looking like I’m going to have to buy her a new iPhone being I can’t ever get it fixed correctly now. I’ve called the Apple Store and asked, he asked for the serial number or something then proceeded to tell me that they cannot service the battery on it and fix it now although the phone is flawless otherwise.

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nitroben2 t1_j1eegrd wrote

Only apple fans and tech enthusiasts would know that. The average consumer still often thinks 'a phone is a phone' and is unaware of the anti tamper measures some companies like apple use to make 3rd party repairs more difficult.

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mgc418 t1_j1es3uj wrote

5 minutes on Google would have made him aware of all of this. This is a known thing and has been talked about extensively. It amazes me that in this day and age where information is abundant and instant people can’t take 5 minutes to do a minor amount of research. Had he done so he could have asked questions ahead of time or just gone to Apple. This is such an avoidable issue.

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nitroben2 t1_j1ew244 wrote

A person making that search would still need to know that there is something that needs to be searched in order to take that 5 minutes and make the search. What exactly do you think they should have put in the search bar?

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mgc418 t1_j1f7eab wrote

A simple “iPhone aftermarket battery” brings up tons of relevant results. So does “iphone 3rd party battery replacement”. Don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what to put in the search engine.

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nitroben2 t1_j1foiy3 wrote

Those would bring up lots of good info but i would question whether "aftermarket" or "3rd party" are terms most people would know to check for. How would someone unfamiliar with right-to-repair/genuine-replacement issues know to search for those? Further, why would a non-certified repair shop bring up that they're using anything other than certified parts unless asked?

Out of curiosity I just now tried searching "replacement iphone battery" and saw no references in the blurbs next to the first page of links about loss of functionality/features, but lots of 3rd parties quickly mention how their replacement does have higher capacity than three original battery did. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the extent of most consumers search process.

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mgc418 t1_j1g8k6f wrote

>replacement iphone battery

doing this exact search brings up info about doing it yourself. this is not what OP was looking for. so at that point anyone would search a different term. if you (not exactly you but "you") are the type to search one term, not find what you were looking for and say oh well, then you should just step away from the internet and crawl back under your rock. but also going to the ifixit page that comes up from this search has info right at the beginning of the instructions talking about his exact complaint. so again, a few minutes with google and the info can be had. let's also not forget he came to this forum to complain. something most people do not know to do. but he did it. and had he spent some time with reddit's search function, he probably could have gotten the info right from this sub.

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nitroben2 t1_j1guqta wrote

Search results are different for different people. On my try i got the obvious link to apple, some diy stuff, and mail in third parties. I also could have searched "phone repair" in maps and just looked up local shops. My point being, there's lots of ways to search for a battery replacement without turning up warnings about the perils of non-genuine parts.

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mgc418 t1_j1hxyw7 wrote

Then due diligence is not being done and you get what you get. I can’t feel sorry for people that don’t do that then complain. Because they are lots of ways to search and come up with the correct information. (Forest Gump voice) That’s all i have to say on that.

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thesecretswim t1_j1cw2rm wrote

Apple really won’t touch the phone now? I just got my 3rd party screen changed for an original at the Apple Store and they didn’t care

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NoSoulRequired OP t1_j1dydp5 wrote

Apple really won’t fix the battery now yes.. not 100% on anything else.

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