TECH REPAIR - Big Tech Companies Are Trying To Crush Small Business

On Thursday, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Facebook reported a blockbuster quarter, earning a combined net profit of $38 billion.

After crushing much of their own competition AAAF (Amazon, Apple, Alphabet & Facebook) now want to crush small businesspeople too. And why not? The federal government isn’t going to do anything about it! Afterall, these big ole huge monopolies tech companies spend a lot of money on the powers that be in Washington DC.

Before I get to that lets take a minute to review their transgressions towards the tech repair, reuse & recycling industry first.

APPLE

Apple can best be described as the industries frenemy. Lots of Apple repairs along with high resell value for refurbished pieces makes them the ‘Apple’ of the industry eye. PLUS, people who work in the industry love Apple product despite how poorly they treat the industry.

For the first 3-4 years of iPhone Apple didn’t care independent repair nor did they do any type of repair work in their stores. But as soon as the repair industry gained some momentum and grew into the billions of dollars Apple took notice.

Where do I start with their transgressions? Allow me to list a few for you:

• In the early days they went after repair shops that used any form of their brand (i.e., Apple repair, iPhoneFixer, Broken iPad, Cracked MacScreen, etc.) with nasty legal letters that threatened legal action.
• Then they partnered with ICE to raid repair shops (happened to me) and parts suppliers looking for anything with an Apple logo on it.
• When right to repair legislation started to gain momentum their high paid lobbyists scarred legislators into believing that independent repair shops could harm people with shoddy repairs.
• The next time right to repair legislation gained ground they invented the Independent Repair Program (IRP) to assure legislators that there was no need for R2R.
• The IRP. That’s all. That’s the bullet point.
• In partnership with CTIA & CTA they have sent lobbyists all over the country to fight AGAINST anyone else’s right to repair in any form or fashion.
• Then the serialization of parts started with a simple error message when a battery was replaced and now the newest iPhone 12 is making independent repair even harder.

Apples transgressions against small business are many!

AMAZON

Amazon kind of flies under the radar in the repair industry but they have hit the reuse/recycling businesses with full force when they made a deal with the devil Apple in November 2018. The deal was that Amazon gets to be an Apple authorized reseller so they can sell all that shiny new Apple product. In return Amazon agreed to get rid of small businesses on their site that want to make an honest living.

So basically all of the small businesses that helped Amazon climb to the top of the food chain on the internet got kicked out when big bad Apple came to town and made Amazon an offer they couldn’t refuse – well maybe if they had a little bit of integrity they might of, but I digress.

 

ALPHABET (aka, GOOGLE)

Which brings me to my favorite fiend of the repair/reuse/recycle industry, Google.

In August of 2019 Google AdWords hit the repair industry with a mighty blow when they decided to no longer accept money from small businesses that helped people get there phones, or other tech, repaired at an affordable price. This decision hit the industry hard because most repair businesses relied on the number one ad platform on the internet to provide them with the opportunity to market their small businesses to potential customers.

Google claimed in August 2019 that they would have a verification system up in a matter of months that would allow these suddenly struggling small business repair people to get back on the ad platform. As of the writing of this post on October 30^th 2020, more than a year later many of these small business people have closed up shop while Google STILL HASN’T ROLLED OUT A WAY for repair businesses to advertise.

Just last week (Oct. 21, 2020) it was revealed that Apple & Goggle are in deep with each other. In fact, the DOJ cites “public estimates” to say that Apple collects between $8-12 billion in payments from Google. Which is almost 26% of Apple’s service revenue last fiscal year. “Service revenue” is mainly REPAIR related.

I’m not a conspiracy guy but that sure sounds like a quid pro quo deal to me!

FACEBOOK

Yes, they are too big and control too much market share (and information, for all that matters). But they haven’t really hurt the repair/reuse/recycle industry YET. So good on you Facebook.

The AAAF are clearly a monopoly. Why hasn’t the federal government done anything to help the small business – more specially the tech repair/reuse/recycle industry???

MONEY – MONEY - MONEY

When you don’t want the government to mess around with your monopoly you spend a lot of money lobbying and contributing to politicians. It’s kind of like when you play the game monopoly and you become the banker so you can take a little for yourself.

        COMPANY           LOBBYING          CONTRIBUTIONS

APPLE                $7,410,000         $5,685,157

AMAZON            $16,790,000       $8,875,411

ALPHABET          $12,780,000       $21,177,686

FACEBOOK         $16,710,000       $6,002,635

 

Truth is, like it or not, you’ve got to pay to play. Political decisions are all about influence and the AAAF has bought a lot of influence. Political contributions buy a voice in the ear to legislators and the lobbying dollars allows you to put that voice on repeat. 

Think of the dollars spent lobbying and contributing to political candidates as an amplifier, the higher the number the louder the sound. Currently the AAAF is on full blast and the repair industry is on mute.

 

What does this mean for those in the tech repair/reuse/recycle industry?

The right to repair movement is great but, for the most part, it’s still a grassroots movement. The good folks at repair.org and U.S. PIRG are working hard to try and get a state bill passed somewhere in the country and they are getting closer but in the meantime small business people all across the country are down for the count mainly because of AAA (Amazon, Apple & Alphabet – I’ll leave Facebook out of this fight because a lot of repair people gather on their site).

If the tech repair/reuse/recycle industry is to survive then it must unite. There is no one dominant company in the industry that has the influence or money to fight the fight against the AAA or negotiate a settlement. But let’s just say 5,000 companies’ band together and put $1,000 each into the pot well then you can make a difference.

UNITE or DIE 

Thanks for the read! 

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