Business

The common denominator of all JOE’s ‘Game Changers’ is that they recognised an opportunity and made it their own. Step forward, Paul McNamara of the iPod Repair Centre.

By Emmet Purcell

We've all been guilty of accidentally breaking a beloved piece of electronics at one point or another, but Paul McNamara's passion is in putting them back together again.

Paul runs the iPod Repair Centre just off the M50 but don't be fooled by the name - if you have any Apple device on the blink then he and his skilled team will take a look at it come back with a free estimate.

The business has been up and running for the past two years and as its creator told us, the idea behind its creation is owed to a simple train journey.

"I was on a train, coming home from Cork one August and everybody on the bloody train had them so I thought, 'they must get dropped pretty often'," Paul told us.

"So that’s where I was coming from and we got that going. By the next January we had the site going and it’s mushroomed from there."

The business' website is extremely easy to navigate, with a repair process that guides users through every step. "The first step would be to fill in exactly what damage you have," reckons Paul.

"Say for example, a guy has a look at the Apple devices and then sees which one he has. So if he clicks on ‘iPad’, he clicks the reason[s] below, maybe ‘Damaged Screen’ and then the results below will come up with the price," says Paul.

"He clicks ‘Order Now’ and when you hit the continue and you get a form to fill out. They will then receive an email with the order number, stick it in the post. We email once it’s fixed. Simple as that."

It really is as simple as that and the iPod Repair Centre's owner reckons that 90% of problems can be resolved by his team. "Smashed screens are one of the main things we deal with but you get people that bring them in with water damage. Water damage is all that causes us trouble," he explains.

One of the reasons the company is able to provide such customer satisfation is that Paul made a decision that he only wanted to repair Apple device. To that end, the iPod Repair Centre also do work for Apple-authorised companies.

"We pride ourselves in that we only do Apple products," he informed us. "We don’t go through every make of phone or MP3 player. We just do the Apple stuff and what that means is that we can do a proper job, we’ve got the spare parts here constantly and we strive to turn the stuff around in 48 hours."

Another aspect of the business that most impressed us was the phone drop-in, which Paul says is perfect for anyone that's in the area or needs an issue resolved ASAP.

"If anyone has a problem they can drop their phone in and we can get it fixed within an hour," he says. "We do that from Wed-Fri because we’d be tied up doing the other stuff at the start of the week."

So if you're reading this article on your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch and peering through the cracks in the screen, head on over and bring that botched device back to health at the repair centre.

You can visit the iPod Repair Centre at the following link and if you have a problem with an Xbox 360 console, Paul provides three months warranty on Xbox parts and free estimates at the Xbox Repair Centre too.