Samsung forces repair stores to destroy customer smartphones, iFixit ends cooperation

iFixit has just announced that it will not be continuing its collaboration with Samsung. After more than two years, the company will stop selling original spare parts for Galaxy smartphones in June 2024. iFixit cites a number of reasons for the termination of the cooperation - spare parts in large quantities are so expensive that it simply no longer makes sense for repair service providers to buy them, partly because Samsung smartphones are often designed in such a way that spare parts have to be sold as a glued unit with several components.

However, as a report by 404 Media shows, the problems that Samsung creates for independent repair service providers go much deeper. Anyone who wants to buy original spare parts from Samsung has to submit their name, contact details, home address, IMEI number and defect details to the company for every repair carried out. Even more dramatic is that if a repair service provider discovers a third-party spare part that was installed in a Galaxy device as part of a previous repair, they must immediately disassemble the smartphone, tablet or notebook into its individual parts and inform Samsung of the details of the respective incident.

If a service provider refuses to destroy a customer's device, Samsung will terminate the service contract and the store will no longer be able to purchase original spare parts and thus offer repairs for Samsung devices. Since third-party spare parts are regularly used to either reduce the cost of a repair or simply to compensate for the lack of availability of original spare parts, smartphones should be destroyed instead of repaired if service providers wish to adhere to their contract with Samsung.

Moreover, Samsung prohibits repair stores from repairing components on the mainboard. Instead, the entire component must be replaced, which can increase costs immensely. The contract, which was viewed by 404 Media, concerns repair service providers in the USA; it is not yet known at the time of publication of this article whether the same conditions are imposed on European repair stores. Samsung is yet to comment on the matter.