Authorized service centers of Apple began to close in Russia

In Russia, Apple authorized service centers (ASCs) began to close, in particular, the MacLabs ASC in Moscow and the B2X branch in St. Petersburg no longer work. On Thursday, May 18, Izvestia writes.

Another Moscow service, Brobrolab, announced on its official website a campaign to raise funds to continue its activities. The founder and CEO of the company, Dmitry Kiryanov, said in a video for clients that in order to continue working, she needs to raise six million rubles in three months. According to him, the problems were a direct consequence of the European Union (EU) sanctions against Russia – computer parts and parts for tablets were no longer supplied to the country. The flow of customers has also decreased, Kiryanov added.

The source of the publication, close to one of the IT distributors, other Apple ASCs that do not belong to large companies or network retailers, such as Re:Store or M.Video, may close in the near future. He recalled that now Apple does not supply spare parts and components to Russia directly, but distributes them to the ASC through a company located in one of the Baltic countries. This increases the terms of warranty repairs and the cost of post-warranty service.

Apple technical support told the publication that the Apple Care + extended warranty in Russia still works, but only for certain devices, in particular the iPhone and Apple Watch, but these conditions do not apply to Mac and iPad.

As for devices purchased by users from retailers as part of parallel imports, there should be no problems with their repair, there are no problems with spare parts for Apple equipment, market participants assured.

Earlier, the newspaper wrote that in Russia, from April, the terms of warranty repairs for Apple equipment will increase to two months. This is due to the fact that the contracts between Apple and its Russian authorized service centers expire at the end of March, and the company does not intend to renew them.

Before that, it was reported that Apple stopped servicing tablets and computers in Russia. Service center employees should suggest that customers who encounter problems contact the store where the equipment was purchased and demand a refund.