How to run a repair warranty without losing money

This guide is shop practice, not legal advice. Consumer law in your country may give customers rights beyond your own terms; check what applies to you.

1. Decide the days, and count them from hand-over

Pick a default the shop can live with, 90 days for example, and allow exceptions on a single repair: fewer days for a liquid-damaged phone you warned the customer about, none for a part the customer brought themselves. Count from the day the phone is handed back, not the day it came in. That is the day the customer started using the repair, and it is the date you can prove with a signed receipt.

2. Say what it covers in three lines

• Covered: the part you fitted and the work you did, when the same fault comes back.
• Not covered: damage after hand-over (a new crack, a bent frame), liquid, and any other fault. You replaced the screen; the battery is a different repair.
• Ended by: someone else opening the phone after you.

Print those lines on the ticket, the invoice and the receipt, and say them out loud at the counter. Three lines the customer reads are worth more than a page they don't.

3. Make every claim checkable

To judge a warranty claim you need four facts, and you need them in a minute:

• Is it the same phone? The IMEI answers that. "A black iPhone 13" does not.
• What did you do? The lines on the original invoice: which part, which service.
• When was it handed back? The hand-over date, not the customer's memory of "last month".
• What did it look like when it left? The photos and the signed report from check-out.

With those four, the answer is quick and the customer accepts it. Without them it's your memory against theirs, and you'll give in to keep the peace.

4. Take a warranty return in like any other repair

A phone coming back under warranty gets a full intake: the fault in the customer's words, new photos, a new condition report. A phone that comes back with a fresh crack across the screen you replaced is not a warranty job, and the photo from hand-over shows it. Open the return as its own repair, linked to the first one, with the covered lines at no charge. Then the comeback has a record and a cost instead of disappearing into "I'll just fix it quickly".

5. Count what comebacks cost

A comeback is never free. It costs a part, half an hour of a technician and a place on the bench. Once a month, divide the warranty returns by the repairs you handed back. Say 300 repairs and 12 returns: that is 4%. If each return costs you 60 in parts and time, the warranty cost 720 that month. That figure belongs in your prices, not in your surprises.

6. Find the pattern behind them

• The part. If 8 of those 12 returns are screens from the same batch, you don't have a warranty problem. You have a parts problem.
• The supplier. Send faulty parts back for a credit, and ask each supplier for their own warranty in writing. If you promise 90 days on a screen your supplier covers for 30, the other 60 are on you.
• The technician. If one person's repairs come back twice as often, that is training, not bad luck.
• The repair type. Some jobs, like liquid damage, come back more whatever you do. Give them a shorter warranty and say so before you start.

7. Use the end of the warranty

A message a week before the warranty runs out, "Your screen repair's warranty ends on the 14th. Is everything working well?", is useful to the customer and fair to you. A real fault gets raised while it's still covered, and a customer who answers "all good" has just told you the repair held. One message is enough.

8. Don't confuse it with the maker's warranty

The phone may still be under its manufacturer's warranty, and opening it can affect that. Tell the customer before you start and note it on the ticket. Keep the maker's warranty date on the device's record. A customer whose phone is still covered may be better off at the authorised service centre for some faults, and they'll remember that you told them.

How SolderDesk does this

Each repair in SolderDesk carries a warranty in days. You set the shop's default, 90 for example, and change it on any repair. It is counted from hand-over and printed on the invoice and the pickup receipt. When a device comes back, the new repair can be marked a warranty return of the earlier one, so the two stay linked. The IMEI, the lines of the original invoice and the signed check-out report are on the record to check the claim against.

Faulty parts go back to the supplier as a supplier return. A follow-up can go out before the repair warranty ends, and another before the device's own warranty ends, and the maker's warranty date is kept on the device. Try it free.