ADVICE

im here to ask for some advice on since I'm opening my own phone repair store form my house what should i do if i don't want to tell the customers where i live but i need to collect their phone can you give some advice

Reply 1

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by Matadd

Would one of those parcel locker services work?

I'm pretty sure you don't need to use a real-world address for those. Your customer drops off their phone in a locker near them, the delivery company transfers it to a locker near you, from where you collect it. Would that work?

Reply 2

Matadd

Original post by DataVenia

it won't work for me since it can be expensive in shipping the phone and people will not to paying more money on top of the repair

Reply 3

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by Matadd

it won't work for me since it can be expensive in shipping the phone and people will not to paying more money on top of the repair

Is a Royal Mail PO Box out of the question for costs reasons too? (Other mailbox providers are available.)

Reply 4

Matadd

Original post by DataVenia

Is a Royal Mail PO Box out of the question for costs reasons too? (Other mailbox providers are available.)

that can be a good idea but clients wont like to ship their phone and wait or such a long time

Reply 5

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by Matadd

that can be a good idea but clients wont like to ship their phone and wait or such a long time

So you need something like a motobike courier service (for speed) which will collect the phone and bring it directly to your home, where the courier knows your address but the end customer doesn't? That speed of delivery won't come cheep - so this is almost certainly a non-starter.

I guess if you only deal with customers in the local area, you could do the collections yourself. But all the time you're collecting phones you're not repairing phones, and so are not earning money.

You said initially that "i don't want to tell the customers where i live". Let's put that criterion to one side for a moment; let's assume that you're perfectly happy for your customers to know where you live. How do the phones get to you in this scenario? Do customers travel to you and drop them off? Because if they don't, then there's going to be some sort of shipping (and hence delay) involved.