Repair Lounge — Attraction in San Marcos

So family friends of mine and I have came here for small to heavy sized repairs in the past. I visited in the past, mainly to get my charging port cleaned out due to lint buildup, and every time I came in, there was always two men or so here that would do it with no hesitation and would do it free of charge since the “labor” wasn’t much at all.

Today, at around 12:05-12:15 PM, I came in and this time, was greeted by a woman instead (didn’t get her name). I told her about lint buildup and that my phone wasn’t charging with certain chargers. Instead, she decided to test out my phone’s charging power and she said herself “so the charger snapped in place, but from my end, it’s a low charge.” She then goes on to say that most phones with this issue is due to the charging port wearing out and instead said I should stick to using my phone as is until I need to repair and swap out my whole charging port, which will cost me $150 (her quoted price).

I was a bit taken back by her input, since as someone who owned several devices in my time, I have NEVER ever needed to replace a whole charging port on my phone. In fact, I’ve never even needed to replace my phone screen on any of the devices I’ve owned in the past. So the way she discussed the situation to me, sounded like a salesperson at a car dealership, made it seem like as if I know nothing about how car sales and the process works, except with phones. Her input basically insinuated that I either don’t take care of my device like many others, or I aggressively jab my charger into the port and “you’ll eventually need to replace it.”

I ended up asking if she could still take out the lint that was in the charging port of my phone (since I’m fully aware of when there IS some affecting my charging), and she said she could but it would’ve been $25 for the service. I don’t think it’s fair to charge so much, when previous members would charge close to or nothing, for a simple cleaning that took them less than 10 seconds. I understand there’s normal charge for labor, but the most she would’ve needed to do is use a singular tool and pull out the lint, as I’ve observed from the past in this very shop. Let’s not act like inflation is affecting our limbs now at this point, price increases on everything else is already bad enough as is.

The most helpful parts of this conversation was when she recommended to not do anything that I would be charged for at the moment or to switch to using my phone’s wireless charging feature instead. I will say, her attitude was great. She wasn’t mean, she wasn’t specifically rude at all, but she definitely was making certain assumptions about me as a phone user, instead of taking my word on something that could’ve be taken care of in less time that this interaction took. For any that visit in the future, use some caution when accepting their inputs on your...

I chose the Repair Lounge, based on their sterling 5 Star exemplary reputation experiencd by a majority of their very happy and satisfied customers. I am now 1 of them.

Erin, & his entire staff, are some of the nicest, professionally service orienteded minded people, I've been fortunate to come across.

In a time where 'basic courteous' customer service 101 is sadly lacking at so many other businesses i frequent, the Repair Lounge (Erin/staff) & their old school ways of treating people, have earned a new loyal customer for life!

FWIW: I spent a bit of time in the Repair Lounge, so I was able to observe Erin's interactions with several other customers who stopped in. He has such a pleasant, very positive manner (calm cool & collected) way of interacting & connecting with people; factor in that he & his highly competent staff are definitely very skilled & excellent at what they do best- repairing computers, phones anything tech related, you'll be hard pressed finding a better place with nicer people to deal with. * During the 3 different occasions that I was in their store, Erin took the time to help a couple of walk in customers fix their devices with a few minutes of troubleshooting, FREE OF CHARGE!

I don't do a lot of these type of reviews...but suffice it to say: I HIGHLY recommend this place! It's s located in a very safe, convenient location and it's very clean and organized inside. I can't thank you guys enough for the awesome way you all took care of me & handled my needs.

Sincerely, John Lee Smith Carlsbad CA...

Calm, cool and confident staff. They diagnosed my PS4. When I was having issues, my controllers weren’t connecting. There was also some kind of error when I tried updating the software. I spent several hours trying to update it, plug it into the Ethernet, troubleshoot the controllers themselves. Tried everything that chat GPT recommended. Nothing was working.

This store doesn’t advertise that they specialize in consoles, but the reviews were so good and I like supporting local businesses. After I explained my situation, the gentleman said that it was probably the hard drive. I asked if he could diagnose it and repair it for us.

I got a call later in the week. Not too long considering he may have had to order parts and had other things on queue. We had a great conversation about hard drives, recommended upgrades to my obsolete computer and even how to fix aging controllers that stick in one direction. He took the time with and shared some really good knowledge. The cost was reasonable considering he used a Samsung SSD and the amount of time it must have taken to replace and put the appropriate files on the drive. Oh and he blew all the dust out of it too.

Got home, tested it and it starts up way faster and loads games much faster than before. All of my games were transferred to the new drive. I logged into PlayStation network, downloaded some updates and we’re playing games again.

My wife said “Now we have to go to him all the time now huh?” ...