Earlier this month, Mobile Klinik launched a new on-demand phone repair service, and now that I’ve had a chance to try it out, I’m thrilled with how seamless the process was.
If you’re unfamiliar with Mobile Klinik, it’s a Canadian-based smartphone repair company that Telus recently purchased. If you break a phone, you can drop your device off and for a parts and labour cost usually amounting to a few hundred dollars, you can get your broken device back looking and working like new in a matter of hours.
The new service sends a Mobile Klinik technician in a van to your home or workplace to fix your phone on the spot, so you don’t have to be without it for more than a few hours. Generally, when it comes to phone repairs, you need to either mail your device somewhere and wait weeks for it to be fixed or drop it off at a physical location that can fix it in roughly a day in some cases. While neither of these methods takes much effort on your behalf, the convenience of Mobile Klinik’s new system is difficult to beat.
To set up an appointment, head to Mobile Klinik’s website, click on the repair tab and put in your postal code. If you live in an area that offers the service, a button appears so you can schedule an appointment. The service is available in major cities like Vancouver, Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and more.
Pretty quickly after I’d booked my appointment, a Mobile Klinik rep called me to confirm what I wanted and to update me on how long it would take to source the parts. I agreed to the process, and they said they would call back in a few hours to confirm. For the sake of testing out the service, I fixed an older OnePlus 7T that I dropped and broke the screen on last summer. I forgot to take a before shot of the smartphone, but I can confirm that it had few huge cracks after falling facedown on some patio stones from about four feet up.
The rep called back to tell me that the repair was scheduled for when I requested. After that, I waited two days, and then the rep showed up at my door and took my phone back to his van for repairs. A little over two hours later, he brought it back to me and it looked as good as new. It’s also worth noting that he called me from the van halfway through the process to give me an update on the repair process.
Every phone repair has a different cost depending on what parts need to be fixed. Also, if you want the mobile unit to come to you, the service costs an extra $30 premium. While $30 might sound like a lot for the convenience of something you could have done for free with a little bit of effort, I think it’s a fair price if you need your phone repaired quickly and don’t want to be without it for an entire day. This is also an arguably safer way of getting your smartphone repaired amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
However, I worry about Mobile Klinik employees sitting in their vehicles fixing smartphones on super hot and cold days. I assume they just have to deal with the temperature, but as we’ve recently learned with Amazon, people who spend their days in vehicles, unfortunately, don’t often experience the best work conditions. MobileSyrup has reached out to Mobile Klinik for more information.
Overall, my experience with the service was great, and if you need to get your smartphone fixed, this is one of the most convenient methods currently available in Canada.
