Fox Paw
Fox Paw is a service that specializes in the repair of smart phones and tablets. So, when I dropped my naked iPhone on the floor and the back glass shattered late last month, it was with a feeling of serendipity that I almost immediately afterwards first noticed the Fox Paw kiosk at my local grocery store. It then took me almost a month to avail myself of their services. The phone still worked and I had other things to do. I just encased it in an Otter Box, where it probably should have always been.
In the interim, I did some reconnaissance during my daily pilgrimages to the market. Most of the time there was a young and friendly sales representative sitting by the kiosk. I once summoned up the nerve and asked one of them how I could get my phone repaired. For $30 in my case, I could drop off my phone at the kiosk and then pick it up four hours later. Unfortunately, on that day, it was already after five and their hours of service end at seven. If I had dropped off my phone then, I might not have gotten it back until the next morning. I felt that I couldn’t be without my phone overnight. Yes dear friends, I really am that sad.
My next strategy was to drop the phone off on the way to work and then pick it up on the way home. This would have given Fox Paw plenty of time to fix my phone. The problem with this strategy is that I am almost always running late to work in the morning and the thought of making another stop always got procrastinated. Days turned to weeks and Apple even unveiled its latest set of technological baubles that made for a very tempting albeit expensive alternative. Cheapness finally won out that and all of the bad press about the new bendy Phablets. Last Saturday, I went to the store in the morning and announced to the rep sitting next to his robot overlord that I would like to get my phone fixed. Unfortunately, the overlord was on the fritz that day, plus without Wi-Fi his backup tablet was useless too. I decided to punt.
Sunday morning, there was a different sales representative and she assured me that the machine was working. She helpfully guided me through the process, which included entering the phone’s pass code. I can see that for some repairs that this information would be necessary. There is also the aspect of quality assurance in any job, but I suspect that it is just part of the blanket questionnaire. In hindsight, I should have just removed my pass code. After entering all my info, including my credit card’s it came time to deposit the phone in the machine. Unfortunately, it was at this time that the robot failed again. The deposit door would not open. There was a backup plan though, the rep just black body bagged my phone, wrote down my retrieval PIN and I was good to go.
Anne and I then went bicycling. When we returned home, there was a message on the home phone from Fox Paw, plus as I later discovered emails too. I made a beeline back to Schnucks. This time there was a third representative and he guided me through the retrieval process, which after a few long seconds worked. My phone popped out all bubble wrapped, along with little extras like a glass cleaning cloth, which is pictured above, a Fox Pro sticker and a 10% discount card on my next repair. The last item might be the most useful, because I immediately ditched my Otter Box again.
Even with the glitches, which were minor in the scheme of things, I would still give Fox Pro two big thumbs up, with one additional caveat. I was warned about this when I dropped off my iPhone and elected to waive the issue, but others might not feel the same way. I was told that my back glass ‘might’ comeback without the Apple logo, which it did not, but for only $30, I didn’t care. I’ve also noticed that Fox Paw is very diligent in responding to social media, I expect a comment here folks.