May 8, 2017

Meet Ned Hosic of Boston iPhone Repair in Harvard Square

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ned Hosic.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Ned. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I have always liked taking my toys apart when I was little, so I suppose the interest was always there. In 2007 sometime, my girlfriend had cracked her iPhone. We took it to the Apple store and we were told that she needed to buy a new one for $300. I was a little taken aback by this – only the glass on her phone was cracked. It seemed so wasteful to toss out a perfectly working device just because of this.

I convinced her to let me try and fix it. There were no screens to purchase on the US market at this time, nor any YouTube videos to help me out. Instead, I found a supplier/manufacturer in China, and after a few exchanges in broken English, they sent me replacement parts for her device. After a few hours with a blow-dryer and some tools I had laying around the house, her phone was fixed. It looked awful, but it worked. I knew right away that there was something here – other people would need a service like this.

I spent the next few months creating a website, establishing supplier relationships, sourcing professional tools/equipment, and honing repair techniques. Business began taking off month after month, year after year; I needed help, and fast. Around this time, my father jumped in, and together, we opened our little shop in Harvard Square. We’ve been here close to a decade now servicing the greater Boston and Cambridge area.

Has it been a smooth road?
It was definitely not a smooth road. A fun one for sure, but smooth, no. I constantly tell our origin story to many customers and friends, and most think that boom, open a business, instant profit, but it doesn’t really work like that. For the first year or two, I put in 80 hour weeks consistently. I had a regular day job that I needed to fund my little venture. After my 9-5 job, my real work began. I spent hours every day booking appointments on all kinds of iPhone and iPad repairs, marketing ourselves, and building our customer base in general. I attribute a lot of our current success to the hours that I put in initially.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Boston iPhone Repair – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Boston iPhone Repair specializes in hardware and software repairs of most Apple products – iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks. Cracked iPhone screens are the most common occurrence, but we offer a wide array of repairs: broken cameras, battery replacements, charging ports not taking a charge, broken home buttons, broken iPads, liquid damage on both iPhones and MacBooks, data recovery, factory unlocking, accessory sales, software troubleshooting, MacBook hard drive and memory upgrades, etc. If it’s Apple, we’ll take a look!

I have watched this business evolve quite a bit in the last decade. We went from being the only one of our kind in town to shops popping up on every corner and in many mall kiosks. As a result of this high demand, there has been a huge flood in cheap, low-quality, aftermarket parts being sold on the US market. These parts don’t look and fit right, don’t function quite right, and tend to break very, very easily. We re-fix shoddy work done elsewhere on a daily basis, and from our experience, most shops in this business are switching over to these lower quality parts. They’re trying to boost their profit, which is completely understandable, but this is something that’s never sat right with me. We buy only the highest quality parts available on the market, offer incredibly quick turnaround times, and charge a fair rate for our work. I think that being a family-run business and investing a decade of time to this endeavor is what has given us our perspective. Our aim was never to be the biggest around or the cheapest in town. We strive to be the best, to do the job correctly the first time around, and to stand by our work. I think this is what sets us apart from our competition.

The number of devices that we fix per year is less than 1% of Apple’s daily sales. Let that sink in – those are enormous numbers, and even though it sometimes feels like we’re not making a difference, I’m extremely proud to be a part of the “repair” industry. Consumerist culture constantly bombards us into buying the latest and greatest gadget, when it’s really not necessary. Sure your existing device might not be the fastest or have the greatest camera, but these differences are marginal. An older device can be fixed up for a fraction of the cost of a new one, sometimes in minute’s time! I can’t tell you how many times we have brought an iPhone or MacBook back to life that Apple has deemed unfixable. And this movement is becoming more important than ever, at least in my eyes. Repair saves the consumer money, helps support small business, and keeps electronic waste out of our landfills. Everyone wins.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
My favorite thing about the greater Boston area is the diversity that it has to offer, in virtually every aspect: people, restaurants, bars, music, theater, sports, etc. There’s something for everyone in this city. Some of the best schools in the entire country are located within the same 15 mile radius, so we’re exposed to so many different people from all types of backgrounds. There are so many different neighborhoods, each one like a micro universe with its own people/feel/culture. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but a bar in Harvard Square will feel completely different than one in Porter Square, and they’re less than a mile away from each other!

My least favorite – the pot holes. I think I’ve spent at least $1,000 on busted tired in the last five years. It’s not until I go anywhere other than Boston that I notice what a normal road is supposed to look like.

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