You break it, they’ll fix it

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/08/2022 (1165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the preponderance of electronic devices — and their rising price — it is not surprising that repairs would become a more organized market.

What is surprising is that it has taken this long for some enterprising soul to acquire the Winnipeg rights to open a U.S.-based uBreakiFix franchise location.

Mike Wiebe, the former owner of seven different Telus dealerships over a couple of decades, and his son Josiah are the perfect solution.

There are already about 70 uBreakiFix locations in Canada, but there had been none in Manitoba, until the Wiebes opened the Northgate Shopping Centre location last month.

(A second location will open in the next couple of months at the northeast corner of Regent Avenue West and Lagimodiere Boulevard and a third location in the south Kenaston retail hub is being sought potentially for a spring 2023 opening.)

After 22 years as a Telus dealer, Wiebe sold his last couple a few years ago and was looking for an opportunity to “stay in our wheelhouse.”

“We were aware of uBreakiFix,” Mike Wiebe said. “We are familiar with mobile phones, familiar with carriers and tech in general.”

The Manitoba area rights for uBreakiFix had been owned by a Montreal investor who had been sitting on the rights for some time but had failed to act on any development and the rights became available.

Mike and his son Josiah, 25, who will manage the Winnipeg stores (two other Wiebe siblings also work at the business) are also “right to repair” advocates.

“We have seen a lot of frustration,” said Josiah. “You own the product, you should be able to fix your own stuff or have it fixed. We are tinkerers. We like to fix our own stuff.”

UBreakiFix is a certified repair centre for Samsung Galaxy smartphones as well as Google Pixel products and is an Apple limited repair service provider.

The neat repair shop set up behind a clean, modern customer-facing front of the store is chock full of electronic diagnostic equipment that can repair cracked smartphone screens in about two hours.

The business claims to be able to repair anything with a power button and serves as the repair centre for a number of extended warranty insurers.

UBreakiFix, with more than 800 stores in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, was acquired by electronics insurer, Asurion in 2019. Among other things, Asurion is the provider for Amazon’s protection plans that are offered with many of the online retailer’s products.

The chain also has partnerships with a number of insurance providers who refer business to uBreakiFix.

“Costco, Best Buy, The Source, they all have extended warranty offerings,” Mike Wiebe said. “They have to have someone to fix those devices.”

With two weeks of training at uBreakiFix headquarters in Orlando, two weeks of on-the-ground technical support with every store opening and a collaborative support network with other franchisees, the Wiebes say that they have the repair capabilities at hand for just about any job.

After his own two-decade-long experience in the cell phone dealership business Wiebe has a good perspective on economics of repairing those devices.

“Maybe when the phones cost $150-to-$200 it was not economical to repair,” he said. “At $500 maybe it was borderline. But once you start getting into something like the Samsung S21, which costs about $1,500, it becomes more economical to do a $200 or $300 repair of a cracked screen.”

As the cost of the products rise, there is an expectation that repairs can be done with the professionalism that it will reinstate the manufacturer’s warranty even after physical damage has been done to the device.

That is just not something you can expect from the old-school repair shops that typically feature impossibly cluttered dirty back rooms run by folks who look like they may have been up all night playing video games.

“We are the opposite of that,” said Mike Wiebe. “We want to be the Boyd Auto Body of electronic device repairs.”

Their operation will do all sorts of work that is covered by Samsung and Google warranty which would be free. They acknowledge that their off-warranty work might be a little more expensive because they are picky about using OEM (original equipment manufacturer) parts as much as possible rather than less expensive third-party ones.

While the Wiebes figure its bread and butter will be smartphone repairs, uBreakiFix repairs most small electronics, ranging from game consoles, tablets, computers, and everything in between.

With a range of expensive diagnostic and repair equipment, they can reliably repair cracked screens, software issues, camera issues, and most other problems.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca