Should a tech repair shop charge a diagnostic fee? Yes, whenever finding the fault takes bench time. A quote for a known repair is free. A diagnostic for an unknown problem is billable work: your floor rate multiplied by the minutes it takes, credited to the repair if the customer proceeds and kept if they decline. Part 4 of the nine-part Fix the Shop First series, with a free script and policy PDF.

By Rob Link, Founder & CEO, Tech Care Association · September 30, 2026 · 32 min read

That is the TCA's position, and this chapter is the first in Fix the Shop First to take one. Part 3 gave you a floor rate; this week you use it. The question, stated precisely: when a customer brings a device into a tech repair shop and the problem is not already known, should the technician's time spent figuring out what is wrong be billable?

Yes, whether you recover that time through a diagnostic fee, a minimum labor charge, or a repair price that already includes it. What a shop should not do is routinely value skilled diagnostic work at zero. This chapter recommends the credited diagnostic fee as the cleanest model, and shows how to set it, say it, and publish it.

The whole chapter fits in a paragraph. Quotes are free; diagnosis is work. If the problem is known, quote the repair. If the problem is unknown, quote the diagnostic. The diagnostic buys the customer an answer: what failed, what it takes to fix, what it will cost, and whether the repair makes sense. If the customer proceeds, credit the diagnostic toward the repair. If they decline, the shop has still been paid for skilled work it performed. Everything below exists to prove and operate those sentences.

What's in this post

1. Key Takeaways
2. Diagnostic Fee, Quote, Estimate, Bench Fee: What Each One Means
3. The Short Answer
4. The Framework: Known, Unknown, After
5. The Phone Quote Trap
6. What Shops Are Saying
7. What the Record Shows
8. Where the Big Chains Draw the Line
9. What Regulators Have Said About Diagnosis
10. What a Free Diagnostic Costs a Tech Repair Shop
11. How Much Should a Tech Repair Shop Diagnostic Fee Be?
12. When to Credit It and When to Keep It
13. How to Say It
14. Track Diagnostic Conversion
15. The TCA's Take
16. What to Do Monday Morning
17. Quick summary
18. Frequently Asked Questions About Tech Repair Shop Diagnostic Fees

Key Takeaways

• Quotes are free. Diagnosis is work. Answering "how much for a screen?" is counter time. Opening a no-power device to find the fault is bench time.
• The framework is three lines. Known repair: quote the repair. Unknown problem: quote the diagnostic. After diagnosis: quote the repair.
• A free first look is a choice; disassembly and testing is the line. Tell the customer exactly where free ends, before the device is opened, in writing.
• The big-box websites will not tell a customer with a dead laptop what it costs to find out why; they route the customer into the store. That is not your model. Publish a simple diagnostic policy on your website and at the counter, in the same words.
• The fee is not a market number. It is your floor rate from Part 3 multiplied by the time a diagnostic takes, rounded to something the counter can say out loud.
• Credit the fee to the repair when the customer proceeds. Keep it when they decline. Written once, applied by everyone.
• The customer is buying an answer, not a look: what failed, what the fix is, what it costs, and whether it is worth doing. Define that deliverable and the fee explains itself.
• In the 11 repair-owner discussions the TCA reviewed, no one volunteered a customer lost to a disclosed diagnostic fee. Several described losing the diagnosis itself by giving it away. That does not prove fees never cost a sale; it shows free diagnosis has a cost too.

Diagnostic Fee, Quote, Estimate, Bench Fee: What Each One Means

• Quote. A price for a known repair, given before any bench work. Free. Subject to inspection for additional damage.
• Diagnostic fee. A charge for the technician's time finding an unknown fault: opening, testing, isolating. Due before the device is opened, credited to the repair on approval.
• Estimate. The repair price given after the diagnostic, when the fault is known. This is the quote the diagnostic makes possible.
• Bench fee or minimum labor charge. Another way to recover diagnostic time: a floor on labor billed on every job, whether or not a separate diagnostic line exists.
• Credited fee. A diagnostic fee applied in full to the repair price when the customer proceeds. The customer pays for diagnosis once, either inside the repair or as the fee.
• Diagnostic conversion. Diagnostics that became repairs, divided by diagnostics performed.

The Short Answer

Yes. A quote is free; a diagnostic is work. When a technician opens a device to find out what is wrong, that time is a billable hour like any other, and the fee is your floor rate multiplied by the time it takes. Credit it toward the repair when the customer proceeds and keep it when they do not. The shops that lose customers over a diagnostic fee are the ones that cannot explain the difference between a quote and a diagnostic. This chapter is that explanation, the arithmetic, the policy, the words to say at the counter, and the case for publishing all of it where the customer can see it before they walk in.

The Framework: Known, Unknown, After

Most of the argument about diagnostic fees dissolves once shops stop using "quote" and "diagnostic" to mean the same thing. They are different products.

A quote is a price for work you can already see or the customer has already named. The screen is cracked; the screen costs this much. The customer wants a battery; the battery costs this much. You give it away because it costs no bench time to produce; the answer is on your price list. A shop should never charge someone for asking what a screen costs. That is customer service, and a repair shop is a service business. The line this chapter draws is not between selling and serving. It is between counter time, which is free, and bench time, which is not.

A diagnostic is the work of finding out what is wrong. The device will not power on. The customer dropped it in a sink. Touch fails sometimes. Nothing about the price is knowable until a technician has opened the device, tested it, and ruled things out. Once a technician has to test, disassemble, measure, troubleshoot, research, or isolate a fault, the shop has crossed from quoting into performing a service. That is bench time, and bench time is what your floor rate exists to recover.

The framework the TCA recommends is three lines:

1. Known repair: quote the repair. The fault is visible or the customer is asking for a specific service. Give a firm price, subject to inspection for additional damage.
2. Unknown problem: quote the diagnostic. The symptom has several possible causes. Give a range if you have one, then quote the diagnostic fee and explain what it buys.
3. After diagnosis: quote the repair. Now you know. State the exact price, credit the fee, and ask for the go-ahead.

The deciding question is one line: can you price it without opening it? If yes, quote it. If no, it is a diagnostic, and the customer is paying for an answer, not a repair.

There is one more stage worth naming, because it is where most of the confusion lives. Between the free quote and the paid diagnostic sits the initial assessment: the technician takes the device in hand, confirms the model, reproduces the symptom, checks the obvious, and decides whether this is a known repair or an unknown problem. You can make that free. Many good shops do, and a 700-plus-store chain does. What you cannot do is let it drift, unannounced, into the paid work. The moment the technician has to open the device, substitute a known-good part, measure, or investigate an intermittent fault, free has ended, and the customer needs to have heard that before it happens.

Quotes are free. Diagnosis is work. The line is not between selling and serving; it is between counter time and bench time.

The Phone Quote Trap

The framework matters most before the customer ever walks in, because that is where the leak starts.

Someone calls and says, "My laptop won't turn on. How much to fix it?" A shop that answers with a number ("that's $149") has just quoted a repair it has not diagnosed. It does not know whether the fault is the charger, the DC jack, the battery, corrupted firmware, liquid damage, a board failure, or something else. The $149 is fiction. If it turns out to be right, the shop got lucky. If it turns out to be wrong, the shop now has a customer who feels misled and a repair it has to either eat or renegotiate.

The other common answer is to guess the fault out loud for free. In one public thread the TCA reviewed (seven comments, Sept 18), an owner with years at the bench described what happens next: she names the likely cause over the phone, and the caller takes that answer to a cheaper shop. She has given away the part of the job that took the longest to learn. Two participants in the same thread said directly that callers asking for a phone diagnosis are often collecting a number to take elsewhere.

The better phone answer does three things. It tells the caller what the shop's typical prices are, because that costs nothing. It explains that this symptom could be several things. And it quotes the diagnostic:

"There's no charge to tell you our typical repair prices. Repairs for that symptom can run from about [low] to [high] depending on what's actually failed. We wouldn't know what yours needs without testing it. Our diagnostic is [fee], it comes off the repair if you go ahead, and we give you the exact repair price before doing any additional work."

The shop still advertises prices and answers every "how much?" call. It just stops giving away bench time over the phone. The fee is not competing with free quotes; it is what makes an accurate quote possible when the problem is not already known.

What Shops Are Saying

Observational evidence from TCA Repair Community Listening. Method and limits are in the footer.

The TCA reviewed 11 discussions among repair professionals between September 9 and 29, 2026, that touched on diagnostic fees, bench fees, free quotes, and phone quotes. This is Community Listening, not a survey; it describes what participants in these discussions said, not what the industry does. Methodology is in the footer.

The pattern that did not show up

The TCA went looking for the story every owner fears: the customer who walks out because the shop charges to look at the device. In these 11 discussions, no participant volunteered one. Eleven discussions cannot prove the customer does not exist, and this chapter does not claim that. What the discussions do contain is the opposite loss, described above: the caller who takes a free phone diagnosis to the shop with the lowest price. Free diagnosis has a cost too, and the participants who had paid it were the ones talking about it. A participant from automotive repair said that not diagnosing over the phone is the one rule that holds across trades.

Every stated fee was credited

Five participants across two threads (seven comments each, Sept 18 and Sept 28) stated a diagnostic, assessment, or cleaning fee. Every one of them applied it to the repair when the customer proceeded. Not one described a fee stacked on top of the repair price.

Each participant described the same sequence: the fee is named at the counter, the customer is told what happens in each outcome, and only then is the device opened. One owner tells the customer they are out the assessment fee if they decline, and described the credit as the thing that brings the customer back for the follow-on work. Another states a two-price quote at intake ("this much if we can keep the port, this much if it needs replacing") so the diagnostic and the estimate happen in one conversation.

The shops that do not charge have replaced the fee with something else

This is the fair reading of the other side. In the port-cleaning thread, one owner charges a small cleaning fee and waives it if the cleaning does not resolve the problem, reasoning that a minute of bench time is not worth the friction and customers almost always proceed to a replacement anyway.

In a separate phone-script discussion (about 16 comments, Sept 9), one owner sorts callers into "price checking" and "discussing options," gives price-checkers the lowest number immediately, and saves the consultation for the counter. In a thread on call versus text versus web quotes (five comments, Sept 18), one owner publishes every price online so nobody's time is wasted, and another shop said an online quote form produced 50 leads in 15 days. A counter-view in that same thread: tiered pricing makes public prices a maintenance burden, and customers want a conversation before they commit. None of these participants argued that diagnosis has no value. They argued it should be fast, published, or free when it fails.

Diagnosis is a pricing input

In a console thread (about 20 comments, Sept 19), one participant priced the job by how long the diagnosis took. In a thread on unfamiliar repairs (15 comments, Sept 22), one owner tells customers plainly that a first-time repair will take longer and reported that no customer has objected. Two participants in a MacBook thread (eight comments, Sept 28) said a used logic board is cheaper than component-level diagnosis on an older machine, which is exactly the repair-versus-replace call a diagnostic is supposed to produce.

The free assessment that builds trust

On a public business page (about 12 comments, Sept 20), a customer thanked a shop for telling her an iPad repair would cost more than a replacement and declining the job. Keep this in mind for the rest of the chapter: the fee should pay for exactly this kind of honest assessment, not discourage it.

Why the fee and the intake form travel together

Two threads this month were about what happens when free work goes wrong. In one (about 20 comments, Sept 29), a shop that replaced a charge port on a phone the customer had washed with soap, tried a second port, and declared the device unrepairable was later sued for the cost of a replacement phone after another shop revived the device months on. In another (about 25 comments, Sept 28), an owner who replaced a screen for free and had the customer sign a waiver received a police report eight weeks later when touch failed.

The consensus in both threads was that the shop had done nothing wrong and had still created its own exposure by working for free on something it could not stand behind. Three participants in the first thread said the fix is a signed intake agreement; one participant in the second said low prices attract the customers who file reports. The pattern for this chapter: a paid, documented diagnosis is something a shop can point to later. Free work leaves nothing on paper.

What the Record Shows

Community Listening tells you what owners say. Three other sources tell you what the practice looks like on paper, and each is specific to electronics repair.

The TCA's 2025 diagnostic fee poll

In the TCA's 2025 diagnostic fee poll of participating shops, the most commonly reported phone diagnostic fee was $20 to $50, and about a quarter of participants reported charging no diagnostic fee. Computer and laptop fees ran higher and spread wider. Because the published results did not record the sample size or field dates, the TCA does not treat those figures as an industry benchmark; they are member feedback from spring 2025, and they are here for two reasons. The most common band lines up with the arithmetic later in this chapter, and a meaningful share of participating shops charged nothing, which this chapter does not pretend otherwise.

Independent computer repair research

The most direct outside evidence the TCA found is a field experiment in the German computer repair market published in the Journal of Public Economics in 2023. Researchers sent identical laptops with a deliberately loosened memory module into real shops. Among the 62 shops where the researchers could identify a diagnosis fee, the average was 36.47 euros, and the authors note that most shops in that market charge a diagnosis fee that is usually offset when the customer orders the repair. The study was not about diagnostic fees; it was about how consumers get overcharged. It is also older European evidence, fieldwork from 2015 and 2016, not a current US benchmark, and the euro figure should not be imported.

Its value here is narrower and still real: it documents, in a real computer repair market, that charging separately for diagnosis and offsetting the charge when the repair proceeds is an established pricing model, not a TCA invention.

Apple and Samsung repair terms

Apple's US repair terms include a section titled "Service Exclusions and Diagnostic Fee." If Apple inspects a device and finds it does not need service, has failed for an excluded reason such as liquid damage or unauthorized modification, or the customer declines a revised estimate, Apple may charge a diagnostic fee, capped in the United States at $100 plus tax. The same document carries a notice to California customers that a service dealer may, in writing, charge a reasonable fee for determining the nature of the malfunction in preparation of a written estimate. That notice cites California's electronics and appliance repair statute.

Samsung's US repair terms for in-home service state a non-refundable $155 diagnosis fee, plus tax, if the customer cancels or declines once the technician has arrived.

The point of citing the manufacturers is narrow. It is not that a phone shop should charge what Apple charges. It is that Apple has written into its repair contract that diagnostic work has a price whether or not the customer proceeds, and that a state consumer statute recognizes the same thing. A shop that treats diagnosis as free is holding itself to a standard the manufacturers do not.

Where the Big Chains Draw the Line

The strongest counterexample to a diagnostic fee is uBreakiFix by Asurion, a 700-plus-store repair chain, and it deserves a fair reading, because it turns out to support the framework rather than contradict it.

uBreakiFix: free look, paid troubleshooting

uBreakiFix by Asurion advertises free diagnostics nationally, for every repair, on anything with a power button, with the line "What's the catch? There isn't one!" Read the rest of the same page. If the technicians cannot identify the problem right away, the company performs advanced troubleshooting for a fee, which it describes as taking the device apart and testing different ways to fix the problem. The fee is applied toward the repair if the customer proceeds. The company says it will tell the customer beforehand if the issue cannot be diagnosed for free, and that pricing and details vary by store; no national amount is published. So the accurate description is not "free diagnostics." It is: initial look free; disassembly and testing paid; paid diagnostic credited to the repair. That is the three-stage model in this chapter, run at scale, by the company whose marketing says the opposite.

Best Buy and Staples: come in and we will tell you

The big-box retailers are a different story, and it is one worth telling to your customers, because they are living it.

Try to find out, from a big-box website, what it costs to have a laptop that will not boot looked at. Best Buy sells a $149.99 "Device Diagnostic and Repair" service; read the fine print and it is a remote software service performed over the internet that excludes hardware. When customers ask on that same page about a hacked laptop or a failed update, Geek Squad's published answer is to set up a free consultation at the local store. Staples lists "Diagnostics and Repair, In Store, $159.99," bundling troubleshooting with software fixes and virus removal, so there is no way to learn what a diagnosis alone costs; a few inches above it on the same page sits a free in-store PC health check that "makes recommendations based on findings," and a few inches below it a protection-plan offer and a trade-in program. None of these pages will tell a customer with a dead laptop what it costs to find out why it is dead. All of them will tell that customer to come in.

Whatever the intent, the result is friction: a customer with a dead laptop cannot learn from the website what it costs simply to find out what is wrong, and is directed instead toward an in-store consultation, a bundled service, a membership, a protection plan, or a trade-in. The TCA's read, offered as opinion and one that should not surprise anyone who has worked retail, is that this is not an accident. Once the device and the customer are in the building, the sale that matters to a retailer is rarely the repair; it is the plan, the trade-in, or the new device on the shelf behind the counter. That model may make sense for a company whose margin is in hardware and services. It makes much less sense for a shop whose product is the repair itself.

The protection-plan comparison

One more pattern the chains produce is the one behind the "shop down the street" objection: the protection-plan price. A customer with a manufacturer or retailer protection plan sees a small repair service fee because it is a deductible on coverage they already paid for, monthly or up front. Comparing that fee to an independent shop's cash price is not a comparison between two repair prices; it is a comparison between an insurance claim and a repair. Say so at the counter. A protection-plan repair is not a cash repair, and the customer did not get diagnosis for free; they prepaid for it.

Tell the customer exactly where free ends. Before the device is opened, on the ticket, on the wall, on the website.

Where free ends is discovered too late

Consumer complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau against national repair and retail brands describe the friction that model produces: a free look, a quoted repair, a deeper inspection, a different price, and a dispute over what was owed. Those are allegations by customers, not findings, and they prove nothing about any one company. What they show is what happens when the customer discovers the line between free and paid after the fact instead of being told before.

What the independent shop should do instead

Do not do this. Your customer is comparing you to a store that would not give them a straight answer. Give them one: a diagnostic policy simple enough to fit on an index card, in words a customer understands, published on your website, where they are deciding whether to call, and at the counter, where they are deciding whether to leave the device. Not in a terms-of-service page, not in the technician's head. A shop that does this is doing something a 700-store chain structurally cannot, and it is a reason to choose the independent shop. The five-line policy later in this chapter is written to be posted.

What Regulators Have Said About Diagnosis

No federal or state action the TCA could find says a tech repair shop must, or must not, charge for diagnosis. Nothing in this chapter should be read as a legal requirement. But several government actions treat diagnosis as a distinct part of repair and independent shops as legitimate places to get it, and they belong on the record.

• In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to six companies, including makers of phones and game consoles, over warranty language implying that using an independent repairer or third-party parts voided the warranty. The FTC said such statements may violate the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and could be deceptive under the FTC Act.
• In 2021, the FTC's report to Congress, "Nixing the Fix," examined repair restrictions including withheld diagnostic software, proprietary tools, and parts limits, and found scant evidence supporting manufacturers' justifications for them. The Commission then adopted a policy statement committing to increased enforcement against unlawful repair restrictions.
• New York's Digital Fair Repair Act, in effect since December 2023, requires manufacturers of covered electronics to make diagnostic and repair information, tools, and parts available to independent repair businesses on the same terms as authorized repairers. Minnesota's law, in effect since July 2024, does the same, and the Minnesota Attorney General's guidance gives "exorbitant fees" for diagnostic tools as an example of a violation.
• In 2020, Apple settled with 34 states for $113 million over allegations that it did not accurately tell iPhone owners what was wrong with their devices and what the fix was, in the matter usually called Batterygate. Not a diagnostic-fee case, but a government finding that telling the customer what is actually wrong matters.

Two things follow. First, regulators are forcing manufacturers to give independent shops the tools and information needed to diagnose devices; that does not make the technician's time using those tools free. Second, the thread running through all of it is disclosure: what the device needs, who is allowed to fix it, and what the customer is being charged for. A diagnostic fee stated before the device is opened and credited on the receipt is the independent shop's version of that disclosure.

What a Free Diagnostic Costs a Tech Repair Shop

Part 2 listed unconverted diagnostics as the third leak in labor utilization. Here is what that leak looks like in the series' illustrative numbers.

The Part 3 example shop arrived at a floor rate of $178.98 per billable hour. Illustrative; your number is yours. At that floor, one minute of bench time is $2.98. A 20-minute diagnostic is about $60 of bench time. A 30-minute diagnostic is about $90.

Now put a week behind it. Say the shop performs ten diagnostics a week that do not turn into repairs and charges nothing for them. At 20 minutes each, that is 200 minutes, or about 3.3 hours, a week. Over a month that is roughly 14 hours of bench time and, at the illustrative floor, roughly $2,580 of bench capacity, valued at the shop's floor rate, given away. Illustrative again. Change the minutes or the count and the figure moves, but it does not move to zero.

Bench capacity given away is the concept to hold onto. It is not lost profit; it is time the shop could have billed and chose not to.

Two things about that number. First, it is invisible. It never appears on a ticket, so it never appears in a report, so the owner never sees it. Second, it is not the customers who stayed who are paying for it. It is the customers who stayed paying for the customers who left, because the shop's rate on paid work has to absorb the unpaid hours. A fee moves that cost back to the person who consumed the time.

How Much Should a Tech Repair Shop Diagnostic Fee Be?

This is where the chapter stops being about what other shops do and starts being about your shop. The fee is arithmetic, not a market survey.

Step 1: Take your floor rate from Part 3

If you skipped that chapter, go back; the fee has no foundation without it.

Step 2: Time your diagnostics

Not one; ten. Pull the last ten diagnostic tickets and note the bench time on each, or time the next ten. Phones and consoles tend to run shorter; laptops, liquid damage, and board-level work run longer. If the spread is wide, set two fees (basic and advanced) rather than one average that is wrong for both.

Step 3: Multiply

Floor rate times typical diagnostic minutes, divided by 60.

Step 4: Round to a counter-friendly number

The technician should be able to say it without looking it up.

If one fee does not fit your work, two usually will. Do not create seven diagnostic SKUs.

Whichever fee applies, the customer is buying the same thing. A completed diagnostic produces four things, and the ticket should show all four: what the technician found; what repair is recommended; what that repair will cost; and whether the technician believes the repair is worth doing. That is the product. You are not charging $60 to look at a phone. You are selling a professional assessment the customer can make a decision with, whether that decision is to fix it here, fix it elsewhere, or replace it.

At the illustrative $178.98 floor:

Illustrative throughout. A shop with a lower floor rate arrives at a lower fee by the same route.

Put the survey beside the arithmetic and the two say different things. The survey shows what participating shops charge; the formula shows what the time costs. The stated fees in this month's listening, and the largest band in the 2025 survey, sit at or below the 20-minute line on that table. That is not a benchmark and it is not a target; it is a reason to time your diagnostics rather than copy a number you heard. If the arithmetic says your diagnostics cost more than you have been charging, the arithmetic wins, because it is the only figure here that knows your rent.

And the fee is a fee, not a punishment. If a diagnostic regularly takes less time than your fee covers, lower it. The point is to recover the time, not to mark it up.

When to Credit It and When to Keep It

The policy is five lines. Write it once and everyone applies it the same way.

1. The diagnostic fee is due before the device is opened.
2. The fee is credited in full toward the repair when the customer approves the estimate.
3. The fee is kept when the customer declines the repair or takes the device elsewhere.
4. The fee and the credit are stated on the intake ticket and on the receipt.
5. The policy is posted on the website and at the counter, in the same words.

Lines four and five are the ones shops skip and the ones that protect them. Every participant in this month's listening who charged a fee described stating it before the work began. The intake ticket is where that statement lives, and the website and the counter are where the customer reads it before there is a ticket at all. A policy the customer cannot find is a policy the customer will argue with.

One decision is yours to make: the customer who declines today and returns next month. Crediting the fee within a stated window (30 days, 90 days, whatever you choose) is a reasonable policy, and one owner in this month's listening runs a version of it. So is not crediting it. The only wrong answer is deciding at the counter, case by case, depending on who is standing there.

A commenter on the TCA's 2025 diagnostic fee article asked whether crediting the fee "negates" the time. It does not. Diagnosis is step one of every repair and the repair price already includes it; the fee is that first step billed up front, so the shop is paid whether or not step two happens. Proceed, and the customer pays for it once inside the repair. Decline, and they pay for it once as the fee. Nobody pays twice and nobody pays nothing.

How to Say It

Two scripts, each under a minute spoken. They are also in the one-page PDF at the end of this chapter, with blanks for your fee, your ranges, and your credit window.

The phone version

The caller asks how much to fix a phone that will not turn on.

"There's no charge to tell you our typical prices. A screen or a battery I can quote right now, because those are known. A phone that won't turn on is different: it could be the battery, the charging circuit, the board, or liquid, and each of those is a different repair at a different price. Repairs for that symptom usually run from about [low] to [high]. We wouldn't know what yours needs without testing it. So what we do is a diagnostic. It's [fee], it takes about [time], and I'll call you with exactly what's wrong and exactly what the fix costs before we do anything else. If you go ahead with the repair, the [fee] comes off the repair price. If you don't, you've paid for the answer and you can take it anywhere. Does this afternoon or tomorrow morning work better to bring it in?"

The counter version

The device is on the counter.

"Here's how this works. Because it won't power on, I can't give you a price until I know what's wrong, and I won't guess, because a guess is how people get charged for the wrong repair. The diagnostic is [fee]. That covers the bench time to open it, test it, and find the fault. When I have the answer, I'll call you with the repair price, and if you approve it, the [fee] is credited toward that price. If you decide not to repair it, the [fee] is all you pay. It's written on your ticket here. Can I get your go-ahead to start?"

Three objections

"The shop down the street does it for free."

"Some shops do. Our policy is that the first look is free, but once I have to open the device and test components, that's bench work, and we charge [fee] for it. What you get for that is a written answer: what failed, what the fix is, what it costs, and whether I think it's worth doing. And if you repair it here, the full [fee] comes off the repair."

"Can't you just look at it?"

"I can look at it right now for free, and I'll tell you what I see. But 'won't turn on' doesn't have a visible cause. Finding it means opening the device and testing, and that's the diagnostic. Looking is free. Testing is [fee], and it comes off the repair."

"I'll just buy a new one."

"That might be the right call, and the diagnostic is how you find out. If it's a [low-end] fix, you've saved a phone. If it's not worth repairing, I'll tell you that, and you've spent [fee] to avoid spending a lot more on a repair that wasn't worth it. Either way you're making the decision with the answer instead of without it."

The last objection is the honest-advice case from this month's listening. A customer publicly thanked a shop for telling her not to repair an iPad. The fee is what makes that advice affordable to give.

Track Diagnostic Conversion

Part 2 put utilization on your Monday list. Put this next to it.

Diagnostic conversion is diagnostics that became repairs, divided by diagnostics performed. Most POS systems can produce it if diagnostics are logged as their own ticket type rather than as a note on a repair ticket. If yours cannot, a tally sheet at the bench works for a month.

Why it belongs beside utilization: utilization tells you how much available bench time became billable work. Conversion tells you what happened after the shop was paid to find the problem: how often that answer became a repair. Together they show whether diagnostics are consuming capacity profitably and whether customers are accepting the repairs that follow. Before this policy, unconverted diagnostics were the leak Part 2 named. After it, they are paid work, and conversion is how you judge the quoting that comes next.

What a falling number means. The reflex is to blame the fee. Look first at what happens after the diagnostic. If the fee is stated clearly, customers who pay it have already decided the answer is worth something; the ones who decline the repair afterward are usually declining the estimate, not the fee. A falling conversion rate is a quoting problem or a repair-versus-replace problem before it is a fee problem. Part 5 next week takes up the estimate side.

The TCA's Take

This section is the TCA's position, not a finding from the community evidence above.

Skilled diagnostic work has value whether or not the customer proceeds. A shop that gives it away is subsidizing the customers who leave with the customers who stay, invisibly, because free work never shows up on a report.

The TCA's position is not that every shop must charge a separate fee. It is that diagnostic work should never be valued at zero. Recover it through a fee credited into the repair, which this chapter recommends as the cleanest model, or through a minimum labor charge, or through a published price that already includes it. Where the fault is obvious, quote the repair and skip the diagnostic. The choice the TCA argues against is the one most shops make by default: no policy at all, and a technician deciding at the counter.

Where the independent shop wins is transparency. Do not advertise free diagnostics and let the customer discover theirs was not. Do not give a firm price before you know what is wrong. Do not charge for deeper work the customer did not authorize. Say where free ends, say it before the device is opened, and publish it. The chains manage that line across hundreds of stores. You manage it across one counter.

What to Do Monday Morning

Three steps put a tech repair shop diagnostic fee in place this week.

1. Set your fee from your floor rate. Pull ten diagnostic tickets, time them, multiply by your Part 3 floor rate, round to a number the counter can say. If the spread is wide, set a basic and an advanced fee.
2. Publish the policy. Five lines, on the intake ticket, on the receipt, on the website, and on the wall at the counter. Decide now whether declined diagnostics get a credit window, and write down the window. Add a liquid-damage line to the intake form while you have it open.
3. Run the script on the next diagnostic call. The next no-power or liquid-damage call that comes in, use the phone version: typical prices free, range if you have one, diagnostic quoted. At the end of the week, count how many came in.

The fee protects labor. Next Wednesday, Oct 7, Part 5 protects the part: parts markup and the minimum margin every repair has to clear.

Quick summary

• Quotes are free. Diagnosis is work. Answering "how much for a screen?" is counter time. Opening a no-power device to find the fault is bench time, and bench time is billable.
• The framework: known repair, quote the repair; unknown problem, quote the diagnostic; after diagnosis, quote the repair.
• The fee is your floor rate times typical diagnostic minutes, divided by 60, rounded to a counter number. Illustrative example: $178.98 x 20 / 60, about $60.
• The policy is five lines: due before opening, credited on approval, kept if declined, on the ticket and receipt, posted at the counter and online.
• The customer buys an answer: what was found, what is recommended, what it costs, and whether it is worth doing.
• Free diagnosis has a cost. Ten unbilled 20-minute diagnostics a week is about 14 hours a month of bench capacity, roughly $2,580 at the example floor. Illustrative.
• The TCA has not published a diagnostic fee benchmark. The 2025 poll figures are participating-shop feedback without a recorded sample size, and the German field study is older European evidence of the credited-fee model, not a US number.

Frequently Asked Questions About Tech Repair Shop Diagnostic Fees

Should a tech repair shop charge a diagnostic fee for every device?

Only for devices that need a diagnostic. A cracked screen with a known price gets a quote. A no-power device, liquid damage, an intermittent fault, or board-level work gets a diagnostic. The test is whether you can price the job without opening the device.

Is a free diagnostic really free?

Sometimes. A free initial look is a legitimate choice, and a 700-plus-store repair chain offers one. But its own page says that when the problem needs disassembly and testing, a fee applies and is credited to the repair. Whatever you choose, tell the customer where free ends before the device is opened.

Is a quote the same as a diagnostic?

No. A quote is a price for a known repair and it is free. A diagnostic is the bench work of finding an unknown fault, and it is billable. After the diagnostic, the customer gets a quote for the repair. Known repair, quote the repair; unknown problem, quote the diagnostic; after diagnosis, quote the repair.

How much should a tech repair shop diagnostic fee be?

Your floor rate times the time a diagnostic typically takes, divided by 60, rounded to a counter-friendly number. At the illustrative floor used in this series, a 20-minute diagnostic works out to about $60. Your floor rate produces your number.

Should the diagnostic fee be credited toward the repair?

Yes, in full, when the customer approves the repair. Keep it when they decline. The credit is what makes the fee explainable at the counter; the fee is what makes the credit affordable.

What if the customer says the shop down the street does it free?

Say that some shops choose to absorb diagnostic time and yours charges for bench diagnosis and credits it toward the repair, then say what the customer gets for it: a written answer they can act on anywhere. Then ask for the go-ahead. The script is above and in the PDF.

Where should the diagnostic policy be posted?

On the website and at the counter, in the same words, plus the intake ticket and the receipt. The customer should be able to learn what a diagnosis costs and what happens to the fee before calling, and see it again before leaving the device.

Does charging a diagnostic fee lose customers?

Some fees cost some sales; no honest answer says otherwise. In the 11 discussions the TCA reviewed this month, no repair professional volunteered a customer lost to a disclosed diagnostic fee, while several described losing the diagnosis itself to a free phone quote. That is not proof either way for your shop. Track diagnostic conversion for a month and decide from your own numbers.

Is a diagnostic fee refundable?

Under the policy in this chapter, no. It is credited in full to the repair if the customer proceeds and kept if they decline, because the work it paid for was done either way. A credit window for a customer who returns later is a choice each shop makes and should state.

What is the difference between a diagnostic fee and a bench fee or minimum labor charge?

They recover the same thing, technician time, in different ways. A diagnostic fee is a separate line for finding the fault, credited on approval. A bench fee or minimum labor charge is a floor on labor billed on every job. Either is fine. Valuing the time at zero is not.

What if the diagnostic finds nothing wrong, or the device is not worth repairing?

The customer still receives the four things the fee buys: what was found, what is recommended, what it would cost, and whether it is worth doing. "Nothing reproducible" or "replace it" are answers, and often the most valuable ones. The fee is kept.

How long should a diagnostic take?

Long enough to produce a written answer and no longer. Time ten and use the typical figure to set the fee; phones and consoles usually run shorter than laptops, liquid damage, and board work. If your typical time is much shorter than your fee covers, lower the fee.

Can a repair shop charge a diagnostic fee the customer was not told about?

It should not, and in some states written disclosure before work begins is required. The policy in this chapter has the fee due before the device is opened, stated on the ticket, and posted at the counter and on the website, so the question never comes up.

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Download the Diagnostic Fee Script and Policy (PDF)

The framework, the phone script, the counter script, three objection responses, and the five-line policy with blanks for your fee, ranges, and credit window. One page for the counter, one for the wall.

How healthy is your shop, really?

TCA ShopCheck is a free two-minute health check built for independent repair shops. Your Run It Well score is the fast read on how the operational side is functioning. A published diagnostic policy is one of the habits behind it.

Run TCA ShopCheck Free

More from the TCA Blog

• Fix the Shop First: The TCA Guide to Running a Profitable Repair Shop (series hub)
• Busy or Profitable? 5 Numbers Every Tech Repair Shop Must Track (Part 2)
• How to Calculate Your Tech Repair Shop Labor Rate (Part 3)
• Why Repair Shops Are Losing Customers
• How Much Should Your Tech Repair Shop Charge? 2025 Diagnostic Fee Survey Results

Rob Link is the founder of the TCA. He built and ran a multi-location repair chain in an earlier era of this industry, and he'd tell you today's operators have it harder. The TCA is independent of carriers, manufacturers, and insurance companies, which is exactly why it can tell shop owners the truth about growth.

Sources and methodology

• Part 3 of this series, How to Calculate Your Tech Repair Shop Labor Rate, for the floor rate and the illustrative example shop.
• Part 2, Busy or Profitable?, for labor utilization and the unconverted-diagnostic leak.
• Tech Care Association, How Much Should Your Tech Repair Shop Charge? 2025 Diagnostic Fee Survey Results, April 23, 2025. Figures describe participating TCA shops; the published results do not record sample size or field dates.
• Kerschbamer, Neururer, and Sutter, "Credence goods markets, online information and repair prices: A natural field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, vol. 222, June 2023, open access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104891. Diagnosis fee identified at 62 of the shops visited; fieldwork in German cities, November 2015 to July 2016.
• Apple, Repair Terms and Conditions (US), Section 1.8, "Service Exclusions and Diagnostic Fee," and the notice to California consumers, accessed September 29, 2026.
• Samsung Electronics America, Repair Terms and Conditions, in-home service, accessed September 29, 2026.
• uBreakiFix by Asurion, Free Diagnostics, accessed September 29, 2026.
• Staples, Tech Support Services, Diagnostics and Repair, Free PC Health Check, accessed September 29, 2026.
• Best Buy, Device Diagnostic and Repair (SKU 3650558), including Geek Squad's customer Q&A on the page, accessed September 29, 2026.
• Federal Trade Commission, Nixing the Fix: An FTC Report to Congress on Repair Restrictions, May 2021, and the FTC's April 2018 warranty warning letters.
• New York Attorney General, Digital Fair Repair Act consumer guidance, 2024. Minnesota Attorney General, Digital Fair Repair Act guidance.
• California Attorney General, $113 million multistate settlement with Apple, November 2020.
• Better Business Bureau complaint records referenced in this chapter are consumer allegations, not verified findings, and no company is identified in connection with them.
• All worked numbers are illustrative and carried from the series example ($178.98 floor rate). They are not benchmarks.

About this data: The TCA reviewed approximately 175 comments from repair professionals across 11 online industry discussions touching on diagnostic fees, quoting, and intake practices between September 9 and 29, 2026. These discussions were voluntary and were not collected through a representative survey. Findings describe the comments reviewed and should not be interpreted as estimates for the entire repair industry. Comments from parts vendors and service resellers were excluded. Individual participants are not identified without permission.

Published September 30, 2026. Last updated September 30, 2026.