To be fair to RapidRepair.com - the initial repair would have saved me money - but the cost of shipping something to them (insured) was substantial. $17 bucks - although I could have skimped on the insurance and payed just under 12. I didn't feel lucky - so I paid full fare.
Late Update: While cleaning up my desk, I recently ran across my receipt from the post office. It shows a charge of $17.35. I sat puzzling over why the bank transaction would show more than what the post office charged me until E walked by.
"Cash back." she explained.
So, I took out $20.00 cash and completely forgot about it. (It's so fun getting old). The amounts that follow have been adjusted.
Add to that the return postage, which RapidRepair bills about $12 for. It's overnight delivery, so that's solid - but that means you're adding $30.00 to whatever they end up charging you for actual repair. Even a modest repair plus shipping puts you in the range of $70.00.
That's the math I was counting on
In any event - you have a small repair - you can save some bucks on fixing your iPod with Rapid Repair. You get above a minor repair and you're better off buying new guts from Apple for $120. My pod needed a new circuit board - which sells for $89.99 installed - so all told I ended up paying $118.00.
This was for a fifth generation 30G Video iPod.
This is not to say that RapidRepair is a bad deal - they weren't particularly rapid (17 days end to end - which included only 12 business days) and their pricing wasn't dreadful.
Three main issues:
- Shipping bumps any repair into the marginal territory
- My iPod's issue (which I considered minor) was actually serious enough to make a repair more expensive than replacement
- You only find out if repair is cost effective after you have spent $60-$70 on shipping and diagnosis.
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