GatorTec — Local services in Gainesville

Tl;dr : Supreme service. Kind, professional, polite front desk personnel. Super clean & tidy little store. Very reasonable pricing on services (mine was under warranty, thus free ^u^). Guy at front desk went above & beyond the call of duty by putting my new screen protector on for me (perfectly). Definitely will come back in the future.

My iPhone 7+ screen randomly stopped responding to my tippy-tappies so I brought it in to see what could be done, as I only had it for less than 3 months. I offered to give the guy at the front desk the box that it came in, as it had the serial ID on the back of it. He said “no need, I can get it off the phone” & proceeded to pop open the SIM slot to retrieve the ID that way. They check her out, tell me it’ll be covered under the warranty from what they can tell & to come back in 1.5 hours & she’d be good as new.

I came back, they told me I was all set. I’m none too good at putting the glass screen protector on so I ask the desk guy if he’d mind doing it for me. He says yes but it might not be great as he’s not super good at it. Well, he did it for me anyway & honestly, no bubbles, it’s perfectly lined up and no smudges or anything on it so I’m super happy about that. I say thanks & leave, get in my car, try to make a call & I see that in the corner where the service bars are says “no sim”. So of course I go back in & tell them what’s going on. They ask if I took out the SIM card. “Nope, I had no reason to do so. But you did pop it open to get the serial number, could it have dropped?” Guy goes into the back room, comes out five minutes later, says the techs had no reason to remove it so am I sure I didn’t take it out. Definitely not. So he checks under the printer & then looks around the counter, for literally less than a minute. Tells me to go to Verizon & they will give me a new one for free. So I ended up late to work Bc I had to go to Verizon afterward, kinda upsetting.

I feel pretty certain — 99% — that it got dropped when he opened the slot but it was mostly a minor inconvenience to have to go replace it. Just wish he would have looked a bit more thoroughly.

Overall though? Good experience. Very polite, kind front desk personnel. They fixed the problem and had my phone back to me in less than 2 hours. I plan to buy an apple laptop of some sort soon, so if I have any problems in the future I will definitely be...

10/27/20 - EDITED/UPDATED The owner of GatorTec responded quickly to my review. He apologized, letting me know that indeed they did have the iPad I was looking for in stock, it had not yet been put in the ‘bin’ and was still in the shipping box. The iPad had been ‘checked in’ and that is why it was showing up in the computer system as available/in stock. He offered to deliver the iPad to either my house or business. I went back to GatorTec today and purchased the iPad and they gave me a discount on the Apple Care for the inconvenience. The customer service representative apologized for the confusion and was extremely helpful! I was happy to shop a local small business AND most of all that the owner and staff were willing to make this right! I will definitely continue doing business with them in them in the future!

10/26/20 - My husband is in need of a new iPad. Unfortunately, most places do not have any in stock for instant purchase. I called GtorTec this morning and was told they had many available in the store for purchase. We went over the specs of the one I was looking for and was assured that it was in stock for purchase. When I got there this afternoon that was NOT the case. After expressing my frustration to the sales associate, he proceeds to tell me that I am not the first customer to have this happen. He also proceeded to tell me what iPads they did have in stock, that were significantly more expensive. NO THANK YOU! Wasted trip across town and horrible...

Had an audio issue with one of my AirPods. Called Apple and the rep told me the issue was likely under warranty coverage, and set me up here for a diagnostic to check. After dropping them off, GatorTec told me that since there was “evidence of corrosion,” I would have to replace the charging case too which would cost $105 since it was out of warranty. Asked to replace just the AirPod with the issue as I had no issues with the charging case. They told me it was “Apple policy” that they couldn’t replace it without replacing the perfectly functioning charging case and there was nothing they could do. Didn’t sound right so I called Apple to check. Apple service rep got supervisor on the line who told me “that’s not our policy. I’m not sure what the store’s policy is and it could be different than ours but it’s not ours.” Apple agent suggested sending the AirPods directly to Apple, and even sent me a box with a shipping label to do so. Went into GatorTec to pick my AirPods up to send to Apple and told them what Apple said. The employees at the store doubled down and insisted that they were just following Apple’s repair policy. Sent the AirPods off to Apple and they replaced the malfunctioning AirPod which was in warranty and didn’t charge me a penny. Either Apple or the repair shop that wanted to charge me $105 to repair AirPods under warranty was being dishonest about...