How to Price Repair Services in a Phone Repair Shop

Repair pricing fails in two directions: a single blended number that hides a losing service line, and a price list copied from the shop down the road that ignores your own bench time and parts cost. What follows is a structure you can defend line by line.

Keep labour and parts as two separate lines

Price parts to cover their own cost plus the warranty you actually honour. Price labour on measured time and skill. Blend the two and the loser hides inside the winner.

Parts cost moves. Re-check it whenever your replacement cycle turns over, and set a policy for how fast a price change passes through to quotes. A quote built on last quarter's parts cost is the fastest way to run a busy counter at a loss.

If you also sell finished devices, keep the two price books apart — our guide to starting a repair shop with wholesale parts covers the stock side.

Build your labour rate from measured time

Do not start from a published hourly figure. Time your own jobs: five units of the same repair type, start and finish recorded, waiting time excluded. Average those and you have a bench time you can trust.

Then cover it: labour rate = (target annual labour cost + allocated overhead) divided by the billable hours your bench really has. A bench is not productive every open hour, so use realistic billable hours and the rate will hold.

Finally, sanity-check the result against the local band. A derived rate far above your market is an overhead or efficiency problem to fix in the business, not a number to hand the customer.

A job-time band table for your bench

Keep the rate internal and quote per job. The bands below are the framework; fill the minutes from your own timings.

Where a diagnostic fee belongs

Free diagnosis sounds competitive, but it moves the cost of unfixable units onto your profitable jobs. Charge for the look, and credit the fee against the repair when the customer proceeds. That keeps the incentive to inspect before quoting.

On board-level and water-damaged units the diagnosis is the deliverable. Price it as one, and hand over a written finding even when the customer declines the repair. Our guide to detecting water damage explains why those units rarely stop at one fault.

Quotes, revisions and the invoice that matches

Quote from a documented check, not from a photo or a phone description. Give three numbers — minimum, likely and maximum — and write down what moves you up the range: a bent frame, corrosion on a connector, or previous work you did not do.

If the scope changes once the device is open, stop and re-quote in writing before continuing. Keep the approved quote with the job record so the invoice reads as a restatement, not a new negotiation.

Price the promise: repair warranty and comebacks

A repair warranty is a cost line, not a courtesy. Reserve a share of repair revenue based on your own comeback rate, and review that reserve every quarter instead of discovering it in a slow month.

Draw the boundary in writing between a repair that failed and a device that later developed an unrelated fault. Where a replaced part is involved, state which grade it is — the difference between service parts, original pulls and aftermarket assemblies drives both your price and your return rate, as covered in our comparison of original and aftermarket parts.

Trade customers, walk-ins and volume pricing

Run two price lists. Consumer pricing is per job for one device; trade pricing is per job at volume, with turnaround commitments attached. Publishing one rate for both gives away the trade margin.

The parts-and-labour split makes trade conversations simple: the partner sees the part at cost-plus and the labour band on its own. Tie any discount to volume or turnaround rather than to the relationship, and be willing to decline work that is diagnosis all the way down.

What quietly erodes repair margin

• Uncharged bench time on quick looks and second opinions.
• Parts price drift that never reaches the quote book.
• Redo work caused by a fast diagnosis on a slow fault.
• Internal repairs absorbed into resale stock instead of costed.
• Board-level jobs handed to a technician paid at assembly-swap level.

Review cadence

Quarterly, look at three numbers: parts cost, comeback rate, and billable hours against available hours. Reprice when parts cost moves past a threshold you set in advance, and keep one versioned price list so nobody quotes from a stale printout.

The retail side of a shop's numbers — what you charge across the counter for a finished device — is a different structure, set out in our guide to pricing refurbished iPhones for retail.

Frequently asked questions