Apple Repair Technicians Will Now Make House Calls If You Live in One of These Six Cities

If your iPhone, iPad, or Mac is in need of repairs and you just can’t seem to find the time to take it to your local Apple Store, the good news is that if you live in one of six major U.S. cities you can have an Apple authorized service technician come to you instead.

First spotted by MacRumors, Apple has begun offering an onsite repair option in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, and Dallas where a service technician can come and visit your home or office to tend to an Apple device you may have that’s in need of repair.

The new service, which appears to have been launched in partnership with Apple Authorized Service Provider Go Tech, can be arranged through Apple’s Support site in the U.S., which now includes a mention of an onsite option when scheduling a repair, noting that “in select locations, onsite service may be available.”

When choosing a repair option in one of the qualifying cities, Go Tech Services will be listed as the top option, allowing users to select it for on-site service while noting that “An onsite visit fee may be charged in addition to the provider’s standard repair cost.” Apple’s support site doesn’t provide any information on what this additional fee might be, and users are redirected to Go Tech’s website in order to book the actual appointment.

According to MacRumors, continuing into the booking process doesn’t offer any additional information on fees either, but rather simply instructs users to select a date and time for repair, and it’s unclear whether same-day appointments will be available or not. There’s also no option on Go Tech’s website to book with them directly; the service appears to operate exclusively through Apple’s support site.

It’s also not clear what types of problems Go Tech may be able to address. MacRumors notes they were able to choose onsite repairs for a cracked iPhone display, but not for a battery replacement, and according to The Verge it appears that it may not (yet) be available for larger products like the iMac where customers could obviously benefit more from on-site repairs.

Since neither Apple nor Go Tech have offered any official word on the new onsite repair services, it’s hard to tell right now whether this is simply a matter of the services gradually rolling out, or whether the available repair services vary from city to city, as most of the discoveries about it have simply been via trial-and-error.

Apple has offered onsite repairs to large business customers for years as part of its AppleCare for Enterprise program, but as the name implies this has only been available to organizations that have thousands of devices. This new service through Go Tech, which is clearly still being backed by Apple, will offer a nice advantage for those who may not have the time to bring their device to an Apple Store, but it remains to be seen whether the additional fees will be worth it, particularly since it’s only being offered right now in cities where plenty of other repair options are also available.