iMedic Minneapolis

I've been visiting Brad at iMedics since he first opened his storefront. My son has needed a couple iPhones screens replaced, and Brad has told me his day job was at an Apple store. Repairs were quick (never quite as quick as the 5 minutes he claims, but not much longer), and cheap. At our first meeting, I was so impressed (in spite of having nothing in his store at the time but an old office desk) that I asked for his card so I could come back and refer others (I've done both). His shop is still not much to look at but is very different from what it once was. There are places to sit (albeit the furniture is worn and torn), there are no more pot pipes laying around, there is an actual service counter, a TV is affixed to the wall, and he has regular hours, though on the downside his prices seem more in line with the competition now. Later I entrusted him with my Galaxy S7 when the charging port stopped working, the back glass cracked and the battery had started discharging too fast. That repair saw me first drop off a down payment in his store, to return days later and spend nearly 90 minutes in his shop to find that he couldn't fix the port. He charged more than he should have for the simplest 2 of the 3 repairs, but I was still happy, until I returned home with a battery that drained faster than the original. Brad realized what he'd done wrong, so I went back, spent 15 more minutes, only to have him break the newly installed back glass. That took him nearly 3 weeks to get replaced because he told me he had to wait to get paid to order this $10 part. I didn't go to Brad for his professionalism, and I accepted that he was an Apple expert and learning about non Apple products, and it was still cheap. Unfortunately, even though he never told me this could be the case, his repair made my waterproof phone not waterproof, so when I dropped it in water, it fried. I did not even contact Brad, even though a certified technician should have been able to re-seal the phone properly...I accepted full responsibility as I and all in my family do with these things, and ate the entire cost of replacing it myself. Even after this, I told someone to have her iPod battery replaced by Brad. She tried, and after going back and forth with him via text, and him flaking and forgetting details all over the place, she showed up at his business, and he wasn't there. When she texted him, he told her he'd flaked (again). Still, in spite of all this, I trusted his ability with Apple products, so when my son cracked the glass on his phone, we brought it in. This was Friday afternoon, he had it fixed in 10-15 minutes (not the 5 he'd quoted), it cost twice as much as the repair a year ago, and he added on a tempered glass screen protector for $15, 100 bucks cash, in and out. Monday, my son told me that the tempered glass screen slid off not 24 hours after Brad installed it, he hadn't complained. The phone had started to do a few weird things like turn on the caps lock and switch pages over the course of Saturday and Sunday...things that hadn't happened before Brad opened it, he hadn't complained. Then Monday, he came downstairs to eat dinner, left his intact phone on his bed to eat dinner, and went back upstairs to find his phone exactly how he left it, but with a hairline crack in the screen that had not been visible when he'd set it down. He has no siblings, the phone was not moved, and I KNOW he's not lying about what happened. I messaged Brad, and he said my son had clearly dropped the phone, implied we were lying to him and had voided the warranty and then stopped answering my texts. He claims that what I'm saying, the 100% truth, is impossible, though I think we've all seen glass take a hit, seem undamaged and then later see cracks appear. I won't speculate on how/why the glass was defective, I just know with 100% of every fiber of my being that it was. I'll just say that if you run a business if you have a long term, loyal repeat customer who also refers business to you, you don't call them a liar, refuse to help them, and ignore them, particularly when you've screwed up their order in the past and they've let it slide, even at great financial cost to themselves. If you go to Brad, you risk a screw up that he won't stand behind. My trust in him has cost me several hundred dollars more than if I'd just gone to a real professional. You can believe that what I'm saying is impossible, and that one of us is lying at your own risk and if you do, I hope you don't get hosed. I'll just say we're not about blaming others or shirking our responsibility, as the experience with the S7 shows. We drop our phones, we get mad at ourselves and pay the piper, always have, always will. We don't place blame even when 99% of others would...even when there may be blame to be placed. But when we're clearly in the right, we don't tolerate being treated like liars. In summary, Brad does not stand behind his shoddy work.