Batteries Plus — Local services in Gurnee

The charging and data sync port on my Galaxy S8+ went out after 1 year and 7 months, and Batteries Plus Bulbs was able to fix it for $80, and installed a new battery at half price ($35) because I was getting the phone repaired anyway. Bhushan Chouhan, the store owner, was able to do the work quickly and get my phone back together. The only issue that came up was that the fingerprint sensor doesn't respond anymore. It seems to be software related and something that happens to a lot of Samsung phones anyway. When I mentioned this, he had me come back in and put a new fingerprint sensor in it. That didn't work, but he didn't charge me for the sensor. It was nice of him to try.

I thought for sure when the charging port was going to go out that I'd be a good chunk of the way towards a new phone, but Samsung has raised the price of the current models and the S10+ is now $1,000, which is twice what I paid for my S8+. I blame Apple for raising the price of the iPhones, thus making it okay for all phones to get more expensive. Since it seems that when iPhones get more expensive, Android phones go up in price soon after. Anyway, with luck I should get a couple more years out of my current phone.

If you're wondering how the pricing compares with ubreakifix, they wanted $110 just for the charging port, and $80 if you wanted a new battery, with no discount for the battery, even though all the work of getting your phone apart in the first place was being done anyway.

Naturally, when repairing something, it's a function of deciding what the price of the repair is vs. the cost of replacing it. Sure, you can get a used Galaxy S8+ for like $250 or so right now, but it will have some charging port wear and the battery will be worn down too. Toss in the fact that I still owe Sprint $100 that must be paid whether I keep the phone or not, and the fact that only slightly nicer (in terms of actual performance) phones cost 10 times what it did to repair this one, and the math worked out.

On an unrelated note...It seems that, despite the high price of a modern cell phone, they get less and less reliable all the time. If you can even make it two years without your current phone glitching, you're just lucky. Phone insurance schemes always end up costing more than they're worth (unless you're just driving over your phone with a lawnmower every few months, and then you might come out ahead....), and they wouldn't sell such schemes ("insurance") if they lost money, overall. Actually, if you calculate the cost of the scheme and the fact that most repairs cost less than your deductible alone, these are a license for the companies that sell them to...

I came to Batteries+Bulbs to get a new battery for my key FOB. It had been taking 10 or more tries to get the van unlocked so it had stopped being an annoyance and was now a concern. We did not want to be in a situation where we only had one working FOB.

Bhushan, the owner and manager, was very professional. He replaced the battery but that didn’t work. He was able to show me that the contact had worn out and the whole FOB needed to be replaced.

We ordered the part and scheduled install. Apart from an attempt to upsell me a new car battery (mine is only 2 years old) installation was seamless.

Until...later in the week when we discovered that my husband’s key FOB had now been deactivated. So we found ourselves down to one working FOB — the very thing we were trying to avoid.

We have 5 kids and I share the van with my older kids so finding a time to return to Batteries+Bulbs to have this situation remedied was a challenge. I finally had an opportunity in April.

Because he had not forewarned me that replacing my FOB would deactivate our second FOB, we scheduled a time for me to return with all components (including the actual keys) so that we would be back to having 2 working FOBS.

If I had made my review without returning to have the situation remedied I would have given my experience a 2.5 stars. Communication was not great (he promised to call when the FOB arrived and never did; while I was in the store I observed him shaming a customer for not telling him information he needed but hadn’t asked for) and the attempt to upsell me on a car battery that didn’t need replacing was a huge red flag (he warned me that my van wouldn’t start during the polar vortex that we experienced in January, however, the van sat outside and started without issue).

I opted to give Bhushan the opportunity to remedy the situation and as a result of his handling that well and doing the right thing by ensuring both FOBs were programmed, I would now give my experience a 4.

For something simple and straightforward like a replacement bulbs or batteries I would highly recommend coming here. If you do something major like a replacement FOB I would make sure you ask a lot of...

The staff is absolutely unprofessional. I called this store last week about the issue with my phone (water damaged but only the screen was affected) and the man I talked to told me that if all my other functions worked a screen replacement would work. I went into the store today and when I explained my problem and told him I just wanted the screen replacement he was extremely rude. He kept cutting me off and told me that I don’t know what I’m taking about because I don’t fix phones and refused me service because he thought I was wasting his time. He told me that he wouldn’t try to fix my phone nor would he even look at it despite another store but the same company telling me there was a free diagnosis. But he told me that I would have to pay full price upfront if I even wanted a diagnosis and if it didn’t work he would take my money anyway. He sent me out of the store and when my older sister went in to speak to him he was very disrespectful to her as well.

I went to another store in the mall and my phone was fixed with a screen replacement in under 30 minutes despite the man in the store telling me it was “unfixable”. I have never been treated or talked to like that before. His disrespect was unwarranted and absolutely unnecessary and even though I am a 18 year old girl, I seemed to be the adult in...