...in some cases. Unfortunately, in those cases, the process of repairing wet cell phones grinds to a halt as board-level repair is very time consuming. Thus, at this time, we are no longer offering a full recovery of your phone for just $45.00 + parts as we once did.
Since launching this website in January, 2015, we have received close to 150 wet cell phones for repair in addition to various solder repairs (charge ports, buttons, etc). At times, the rate at which wet phones were being repaired slowed significantly due to one phone requiring extensive board-level testing/repairing. Then the repair speed would pick back up until the next rabbit hole phone showed up and required extensive testing and board-level repair.
This is neither fair for our customers or our repair shop as phones deemed rabbit-holes bring the repair queue to a halt. Not sure what a rabbit-hole phone is? Eli, the Computer Guy does a great job explaining it in the video below.
Since launching this website in January, 2015, we have received close to 150 wet cell phones for repair in addition to various solder repairs (charge ports, buttons, etc). At times, the rate at which wet phones were being repaired slowed significantly due to one phone requiring extensive board-level testing/repairing. Then the repair speed would pick back up until the next rabbit hole phone showed up and required extensive testing and board-level repair.
This is neither fair for our customers or our repair shop as phones deemed rabbit-holes bring the repair queue to a halt. Not sure what a rabbit-hole phone is? Eli, the Computer Guy does a great job explaining it in the video below.
So, from this point forward, we can no longer offer "water damage restoration" with a guarantee that you will receive a working phone. While ALL wet phones CAN be fixed, I learned a new acronym while at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas last week: BER. You can pronounce that as B.E.R. or phonetically as "bear". BER stands for "beyond economic recovery". I learned this acronym from a booth at the conference for a company that does nothing but cell phone refurbishing. The guy at the booth explained their model of identifying BER devices so that they do not waste time trying to refurbish it. BER's cost companies money and we, at ri4d.com is not immune to this loss. If a dead phone is deemed, "not economically viable", we will not work on it for the sake of reviving a dead device.
We will still offer water damage repair. After all, that is the foundation of this website. However, the name has been changed from "water damage recovery" to "water damage cleaning". (link for that is here: http://www.riceisfordinner.com/store/p17/Water_Damage_Cleaning.html) Your phone will still be stripped to its bare components and the protective shields removed from the logic board (only way to do water damage repair work properly), then cleaned in one of our high-end ultrasonic cleaners (not a jewelry cleaner), reassembled and tested. If components such as the battery, buttons, charge port, screen, etc are found to be defective due to the water damage, we will submit an estimate for replacing those items and send an invoice for the balance due upon your approval. Many cell phones can be restored under this approach. It's the handful of phones that don't come back to life after ultrasonic cleaning that have high potential for becoming a Rabbit Hole to Hell and becomes the proverbial "wrench" tossed into the gears, grinding everything to a halt.
I've always been the last to give up on something, so this isn't an easy decision to come to, but for company viability and out of fairness to all of our customers, ri4d.com will no longer chase down problems on all wet phones sent in for repair.
As an alternative solution for those who have damaged devices, whether by water or other means, we will now offer a data recovery only option at a flat rate of $199 and a no-data, no-pay guarantee. Meaning, if you send your dead device to us for data retrieval and we cannot get the data off, then you pay nothing. We cannot offer it for less than $199 because of hours of work needed to get to the data recovery point. This is a flat-rate no matter the device and is perfect for anyone with once-in-a-lifetime photos and videos, contact lists, and other information that wasn't backed up prior to the accident that caused the device to no longer function. This option can be found here: http://www.riceisfordinner.com/store/p35/Data_Recovery.html
We will still offer water damage repair. After all, that is the foundation of this website. However, the name has been changed from "water damage recovery" to "water damage cleaning". (link for that is here: http://www.riceisfordinner.com/store/p17/Water_Damage_Cleaning.html) Your phone will still be stripped to its bare components and the protective shields removed from the logic board (only way to do water damage repair work properly), then cleaned in one of our high-end ultrasonic cleaners (not a jewelry cleaner), reassembled and tested. If components such as the battery, buttons, charge port, screen, etc are found to be defective due to the water damage, we will submit an estimate for replacing those items and send an invoice for the balance due upon your approval. Many cell phones can be restored under this approach. It's the handful of phones that don't come back to life after ultrasonic cleaning that have high potential for becoming a Rabbit Hole to Hell and becomes the proverbial "wrench" tossed into the gears, grinding everything to a halt.
I've always been the last to give up on something, so this isn't an easy decision to come to, but for company viability and out of fairness to all of our customers, ri4d.com will no longer chase down problems on all wet phones sent in for repair.
As an alternative solution for those who have damaged devices, whether by water or other means, we will now offer a data recovery only option at a flat rate of $199 and a no-data, no-pay guarantee. Meaning, if you send your dead device to us for data retrieval and we cannot get the data off, then you pay nothing. We cannot offer it for less than $199 because of hours of work needed to get to the data recovery point. This is a flat-rate no matter the device and is perfect for anyone with once-in-a-lifetime photos and videos, contact lists, and other information that wasn't backed up prior to the accident that caused the device to no longer function. This option can be found here: http://www.riceisfordinner.com/store/p35/Data_Recovery.html
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