FRANKLIN, Tenn. - What do you do when you drop your cell phone and the glass cracks or even worse shatters?
You could go out and buy a new phone. But if you're not ready to replace it just yet, you'll probably have the screen replaced. But where you have that glass repaired can make all of the difference.
It's happened to many of us.
Katie Harton recalled when it happened to her.
"I had so much in my hands that I just dropped my phone and it shattered on the top left corner," she explained.
But the 17-year-old said as bad as cracking the glass on her phone was, getting it fixed was even worse.
"Oh, I was infuriated. I was so mad," Harton described.
And she's not the only one we found who's had problems at IFixandRepair at the Cool Springs Galleria.
Harton said just hours after getting her screen replaced there, a huge crack suddenly appeared across the glass.
"And it just broke?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked.
"Just broke," she answered. "I didn't drop it. I didn't do anything. I came home. I wiped the screen and it just cracked."
But when Harton took her phone back to the store the next day, the manager refused to fix it, citing the store's no refund policy. And when Harton protested, he gave her the regional manager's phone number. But repeated calls to her, Harton told NewsChannel5 Investigates, have gone unanswered.
Harton's mother then took the phone to another repair place and was told it had not been fixed correctly.
"He said the microphone for the earpiece, it's supposed to fit flush. It was not. It's supposed to fit in this hole and it was not. So it was just a matter of time when she touched it the wrong way that it was going to crack," Kathy Harton said.
So she went back to IFixandRepair and pointed out their posted 60 day warranty on parts and repairs. But, again, the store refused to do anything about the broken screen insisting they'd never seen anything like it before.
That's when, Harton explained, another customer walked in.
"The gentleman walks in and he says I have my son's phone. It's cracked right here at the earpiece," she said.
That was Bob Dahl. His 15-year-old son's phone cracked in the same place the same way after having it fixed at the same shop.
"All of a sudden, it just cracked," Dahl described.
And, he said, they too got no help from IFixandRepair or its regional manager.
"I called several times. I texted her. There was no response. Ever. None. That's not the way to run a business," Dahl said.
Dahl said when he took his son's phone to another shop, they told him the glass cracked because it was a cheap off-brand screen.
Whatever the reason, Apple recommends you only take your phone to an authorized Apple repair shop so you know you're getting a real Apple screen put on by someone who has been trained by the company.
Apple told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that IFixandRepair is not one of their authorized shops, while Bob Dahl said it's not a place he'll ever go back to.
"Unfortunately, the store really hasn't learned their lesson about how to take care of their customers," he stated
NewsChannel 5 Investigates had a hard time reaching the regional manager of IFixandRepair, but when we finally did, she told us the company stands by its no refund policy.
