I noticed this place when it first opened up and I was immediately skeptical. I assumed that it'd be the kind of place that charges astronomical mark ups for simple repairs that you could do at home.
Fast forward a few years, and now I've actually used the service and am very pleased. My wife and I both broke our iPhone 5Cs. We dropped them on our kitchen floor (mine even had a case on it) and the display went out. I brought mine in and asked the sales person at the front of the store her opinion and she thought it'd likely need a new screen and she gave me a price (about $100 plus tax). I walked around the mall to another store and got the same price elsewhere.
Thinking it might just be a loose plug or something, I opened up my 5C and made the problem significantly worse. Now the thing wouldn't power on at all. So, instead of monkeying around in my wife's phone, I brought it into Digiexpress.
I actually gave them both of my phones and explained to them the stupid thing I had done with mine. The fix for my wife's phone was straightforward: replace the display for $25 service fee plus $75 parts, and it'd be done in an hour.
For my phone, we talked it over and decided to do a diagnostic evaluation for $25 and have them call me with what they thought would fix the situation. Just like taking your car in to the mechanic. After about 45 minutes, they called me and said that the display needed to be replaced and the battery, too. The battery would be about $20 additional. I authorized the repair and I came back about an hour later to find out that more things had begun going wrong when they tried to put the phone back together. The volume buttons had shorted out. The tech said he suspected that there was a deeper problem. They quoted me a price to fix everything they had identified, but they were upfront about their concern that the device might have additional failures. They had done extensive testing on the device and had installed a new battery and display on it and put it together, but at the end of the day, I asked them to just put my old parts back in it and give it back to me. They still charged me the $25 repair/diagnostic fee, and I was fine with that.
My wife's phone on the other hand was perfectly fine. We've had it a day and it's working like new so far. There's a 90 day service warranty and lifetime guarantee on the parts (any manufacturer defects, they'll replace it for free--if it's before 90 days, then they waive the $25 service fee).
Overall, I'm very pleased. I paid just over $100 to fix the 5C. For Apple out-of-warranty service (our phones are just over a year old), we'd pay $269. For a used phone on eBay, we'd pay $220. This was worth it.
As for my phone, it didn't get fixed, but I felt respected and informed throughout the entire process. I didn't feel like I was being hit up for extra money or strung along. After all their trouble, I only spent $25 for about an hour and a half worth of testing, assembly and disassembly.
UPDATE:
I'm updating this review and downgrading from 5 stars to 2 stars. The reason: value. The iPhone 5C I mentioned above that got a replaced screen for $100+ is now broken after 4 months. It suffered a minor drop with an Otterbox Commuter on it and the glass began to crack along the speaker. After a few more weeks, the multitouch became unresponsive. We took it into the Apple Genius Bar for an opinion. They said that once the crack formed, continuing to use the phone began damaging the internal components. And because we had 3rd party parts in the phone, they wouldn't touch it.
Here's the kicker: I was wrong about the pricing. Apple would have replaced the screen as an out of warranty repair for $129. Which was about the same as what I paid at DigiExpress. I think the quality of the parts used to repair this phone was too low. It was not a good value. It did not last.
Regarding my second phone that they disassembled and determined that it was irreparable because it was "shorting out" I got an opinion from the Apple Genius Bar, too (this was in Shadyside, btw). They said that even though a 3rd party had cracked it open, if they gave me all my OEM parts back, they'd still fix it for $129, provided that the only thing that needed to be fixed was the screen. If there was something else wrong, they'd charge me about $269 for a new phone. Or, I could say "no thanks" and walk away with my old broken phone without paying a cent. Keep in mind that I no longer have an AppleCare warranty. This was a far better arrangement than DigiExpress, who I paid $25 for the diagnostic.
And here's the kicker: Apple fixed my phone for $129. They fixed it even though DigiExpress said that various parts were "shorting out." Essentially, I paid $25 for a poor diagnostic. Bad value.
I want to stress that the folks at DigiExpress were very, very nice. But I did not get what I paid for.
My recommendation: Go to Apple first. It won't cost you a cent, and you'll get quality OEM part read more
