The Repair Pixies

Customers have very little idea of what a phone repair centre is like. This is probably for the best in some ways, really.

Some customers don't seem to realize there are repairs at all: "Broken cheap and easily replaced part, please replace phone." I've even seen a returned phone that the customer claimed we had replaced; turned out we'd just changed the sub pba on it.

Some customers seem to think there are idiot monkeys doing the repairs; "callers can't hear the customer, this is a microphone fault, please replace it". Scammers often seem to fall into this category - and we do get attempts to scam the system.

Some customers seem to think we're a bit more like Santa's workshop; "This one time on a trip to Sweden, the phone turned off by itself while it was loose in my purse. Please make everything better."; and "If phone is replaced, may I have white instead of black, and also can you save my apps?"

Some customers assume we don't check anything (hello, scammers), or don't check much; "My app is slow and I sent the phone in before and it was sent back with no problems found so I'm sending it again please check the hardware". Other customers seem to think we can find the reason their phone signal gets low every five-six days.

The truth is, we average 15 minutes per phone and we've seen most of the issues that come in before; I diagnose some phones in the first 10 seconds. However, there could always be a second fault, or an error - every single phone gets tested, opened up to check the hardware, flashed with new software, run through an RF testing process, and then tested again by QA. Every. Single. Phone. The photos of your family you've set as wallpaper become part of a forgettable series - I won't remember what they looked like within a minute of completing your phone. But I'm not letting that phone go until I'm sure it works, either.

No, we don't have a space-age Santa's workshop with magical pixies repairing your phones. The magical pixies are all on the HTC line; there's nobody here but us fairy princesses.