How to quote and handle water-damage repairs at the counter

Ask before you promise anything

A customer holding a wet phone wants to hear “yes, we can fix it.” Hold that answer. Ask first:

• What liquid, and how long ago? Fresh water, pool water, salt water, soda and coffee leave different residue. Hours versus days changes what you will find inside.
• What have you tried? Charging it, repeated power-ups, a hair dryer, a bag of rice. Each one changes the odds and belongs on the ticket.
• What works right now? Power, charging, display, touch, sound, cameras.
• Has it been repaired before? A replaced screen with tired adhesive lets liquid in more easily, and an earlier repair can complicate yours.
• Which matters more, the phone or the data? This one question shapes the whole job. Some people only want their photos back.

Write the answers on the ticket, in the customer’s own words when you can.

Record condition before you open it

Test and record everything you can while the customer is still at the counter. If it won’t power on, write that down, and mark anything you couldn’t check as “not tested” instead of leaving a blank. Note what you can see: fog under the camera glass, residue in the port, a lifted display. A lifted display can point to a swollen battery, so don’t put it on a charger. Photograph anything unusual and reference the photos on the ticket. The device intake checklist covers the full list.

Quote in stages, not in one number

A single fixed price for liquid damage is a promise you can’t keep. A staged quote is easier to defend and easier for the customer to follow:

1. Diagnostic. Decide your shop policy, free or a set charge credited toward the repair, and state it the same way every time.
2. Cleaning and inspection. Open the device, pull and inspect the board, clean the corrosion and test again. Give a price and a timeframe for this step alone.
3. Parts. Once it’s clean, you know whether it needs a screen, battery, charging port or more. Call with that quote before ordering or installing anything.
4. Board-level work. If your shop does it, quote it separately. If it doesn’t, say so up front and stop at step 3.

Agree on an approval limit at intake: the amount the customer accepts without a call. It keeps the bench moving without surprise bills. The repair price worksheet helps keep liquid pricing consistent no matter who is at the counter.

Say the hard parts out loud

People take bad news better before a repair than after it. At the counter, cover three points:

• Corrosion can keep spreading after cleaning, so a device that works today may develop new problems later.
• Some devices can’t be saved, and data recovery is never guaranteed.
• Your warranty covers the parts you replace, not the liquid damage itself or other components it affected.

Have the customer initial beside that note. The warranty policy template has wording you can adapt.

Put the data first when it matters

When the customer cares most about data, build the job around it: clean, get it to boot, back it up, then talk about parts. Before work starts, confirm they know their passcode and their account password. A phone that boots but can’t be unlocked doesn’t help anyone. Never keep passcodes on paper that sits in a drawer.

Keep liquid jobs organized on the bench

Give liquid jobs their own labeled tray or shelf so they don’t mix with routine work. Isolate swollen batteries in a fire-safe container. Log each step on the ticket as it happens: what you found under the shields, what you cleaned, what you replaced, and the test results afterward. When the customer comes back in two weeks with a new symptom, that history is how you tell new damage from old corrosion or a failed part. The phone diagnosis guide covers the testing order.

Close the ticket cleanly

At pickup, test the device again in front of the customer, walk through what was done, and repeat what the warranty covers. If it couldn’t be saved, return it in the condition it arrived and record that on the ticket. Suggest a backup routine going forward. Customers remember the shop that gave them straight answers on a bad day.

Where RepairAmigo fits

RepairAmigo is free repair shop software built inside a working repair shop with more than 50,000 tickets behind it, so liquid jobs, staged quotes and comebacks were part of its everyday use from the start. There are no ticket or user limits. It runs as one VirtualBox VM on your shop network, on a host computer with 16 GB RAM, and your team uses it from any browser. Setup takes about an hour, and it comes in a separate Spanish edition for shops that work in Spanish. RepairAmigo is Made in Texas and coming soon.

RepairAmigo runs the counter at 254 Repair, a repair shop in Killeen, Texas.