Mobile telephone users are complaining about mobile telephones repairers who charge expensively to repair used telephones yet new ones are cheap.
This has led to many people into loss of purchasing many cell phones in short period of time due to fear of paying much money for repair.
While the cheapest telephone costs Rwf7500, some repairers charge Rwf5000 to fix the used one almost the same money that buys a new phone.
On June 27th 2012, we found one customer by names of Fisi aged 27 years; having hard time negotiating over Rwf5000 the repairer was asking him to pay.
When asked about his opinion, Fisi explained: “These repairers do exaggerate their fares. If they do not reduce on the money, I will buy a new mobile phone.”
Rudasingwa, a repairer confirmed to us that technology is expensive to learn, so their services have to be a bit expensive as well.
When asked whether they won’t lose customers by charging highly, Rudasingwa said that they repair expensive telephones that do not require Rwf7500 to buy.
He added that sometimes they charge more than Rwf5000 depending on the quality of that mobile phone.
Among the challenges that phone repairers meet, are some unqualified technicians that destroy peoples telephones while trying to fix them.
However, there is less that the government of Rwanda or RURA can do to set the price of repairing since it all depends on the damage and understanding between the owner and the technician.