Portatronics

Never, by any means, ever have your Beats Headphones repaired here. When repaired, at best sound quality will be reduced by 75%. I took two headphones here, had them re-​repaired after first attempt was unsuccessful, and one pair still had reduced sound quality (No bass at all) while the other pair only played bass from one side. Their workaround is likely the culprit, as they don’t repair them in the same way they are made, resulting in two cord instead of one. The tech will blame the problems on your phone instead of getting them repaired properly. My apple factory headphones sound better. Bottom line, this place is a joke and your money is better spent elsewhere.

Waste of both money and time!
I took two things for repair here, a Sony camera and a Sony phone. Service and conversation when I first went in was acceptable, and they quoted and ‘repaired’ both in a reasonable time. However, both were again not working within hours of starting to use them again.
I went back in to explain that, and I spoke with a different person (after he actually ignored me for a good 5 minutes), who was incredibly indifferent and close to rude. I had them diagnosis them again, since they had originally ‘repaired’ them. But I didn’t trust the appraisal.
I brought both to Phototech (wish I had known about this place earlier, go there instead!). They reviewed both.
It turns out the camera, which I paid to put a brand new lens and portatronics for the labor, did not have a broken lens, but instead a faulty internal main circuit board which was causing lens to get stuck. So I then had to pay anew for a part and labor, I had no desire to let portatronics touch it again.
The phone, which I paid for a new lens also (!) and labor, was taking blurry photos because the back screen was broken. Portatronics told me on the second visit that the reason it was still taking poor photos after they repaired it was because the camera module was broken and need to be replaced. The camera module was not broken. Phototech put a new back case on the phone (much cheaper than replacing camera module), and now it’s working fine.
Bottom line — not only were they not friendly at all, they actually mis-​diagnosed both of the pieces of equipment I took to them, and then were rude when I had to go back in after they stopped working, and then misdiagnosed them AGAIN. The whole experience wasted my time and money. Don’t go there.

DO NOT USE! The owner Maik damaged our Canon 5D Mark II and then refused to repair it. Do go somewhere else. We made the mistake of stopping a pro camera off for repair here. We had a blown USB port and when we got it back the power switch didn’t work. When we asked, he said, «just remove the battery when you need it off» WTF! And if he tries to say something different, I will upload all the emails of back and forth. We told him to remove the USB port he repaired and give su the camera back. Took it to the TOP NOTCH PHOTOTECH repair facility. Had to pay an extra $ 180.00 to repair the broken on/​off switch on top of the $ 4800 of the USB port. Wrote him to let us know about the extra repair charge, He never replied. DO NOT GO HERE!
Look at all his reviews below. All the same thing, he is the worst. Had the body for three months and kept saying he was fixing it. PhotoTech took one week.

My Ipod classic was getting sort of glitchy, and I prefer it over the Iphone as a music listening device — so I dropped it off at Portatronics. They quickly diagnosed and repaired it to my complete satisfaction. Smart, well-​trained and very pleasant to deal with — would go there next time one of my gadgets goes haywire!

WORSE SERVICE EVER
i’ll save you a long story — lazy, stupid, slow and obnoxious. save yourself a very bad experience and go somewhere else.

They fix my S4 screen in 40 minutes. Good service. They could put a chair there to make the wait more comfortable

Portatronics is either blatantly lying to me or gave my device to someone who walked in off of the street. MY PHONE IS LITERALLY GONE. They have no record of who picked up the device or when… because they do not have any kind of RECORD KEEPING for when a phone walks out of their store. They have offered ZERO help and say that they «remember» someone coming in to pick it up. If you care about your items– as in would prefer them to remain in your possession after being worked on– go elsewhere.

Friendly, fast and reasonably priced.
Maik fixed my iPod Classic in less than an hour.
If only there were a place to sit while waiting.

Worst service i have ever received. Stay far away from this place. took two weeks to order a part they said would be 3 days. Went on to loose this part in the other store and sent me around Manhattan looking for the part. They then proceeded to over charge me and the worst thing is the screen came back damaged.

Such a great service & staff is very intelligent, Excellent staff, I brought my both hard drive, I have some issues with that & person solve the problem so fast, very talented staff.
I will spread the word of this location & store obviously.

So, I actually thought this place pretty good, and they seem to know what they’re doing, but there are a couple reasons they’re only getting four stars from me.
I called them looking for a replacement power cable for my laptop that I unfortunately lost, and I needed it ASAP. As in I could not wait for some place to ship one to me. They told me they had the power cord in stock, and to come downtown to pick it up. Downtown is quite a hefty trek for me, but I needed the cord. When I got there, they didn’t actually have the cord in stock, BUT, they did have the parts to macguyver one together for me, which was actually pretty cool.
Now, if I would have ordered the cord online, it would have cost me anywhere between twenty two and twenty five bucks. This place made my cord with a little soldering, some hot glue, and electrical tape, and for the five minutes of labor, charged me forty bucks for the charger and work. When I asked they could lower the price a smidge, the rep I was speaking to told me he could have if it weren’t for the fact that they just made custom piece for me. Now, to my understanding, they sell this charger in stores, and they even TOLD me they already had it. I didn’t come downtown expecting to pay for labor and a «custom» item, but I REALLY needed the charger, and couldn’t find it anywhere else, so I ponied up the cash.
Atop this, when I walked in, two of the three people working there very clearly saw me and ignored me until I asked to be helped. Mind you, after they began helping me, they were friendly enough, but it put me off a bit to not be greeted when I walked into the shop.
Ultimately, these guys do great work. They seem knowledgeable about what they were doing and the fact that they were able to make something I needed — which works perfectly, I might add — is very cool. I just work in the customer service industry and don’t know how much I can condone the whole customer service aspect of the exchange.

Traded in my Kindle that had a broken screen. The one they had in stock wouldn’t register online, so on the spot they swapped the motherboards. Took about fifteen minutes, and they didn’t charge extra even though they were swamped and it wasn’t an easy fix. Glad to have my e-​reader back in action.

Terrible business. Sent the wrong part nearly five weeks after I ordered it. They took 2 weeks to respond to my email. Told me to return it (on my dime) without giving me an address.

Couldn’t be happier. After 3 frustrating visits to two different Apple stores and numerous calls to several questionable tech repair companies, I luckily and thankfully found Portatronics. They replaced my cracked iPhone5 screen in less than an hour and for a fraction of what Apple wanted to charge me. Nice, smart, convenient Midtown location, reasonable rates. Owner Maik told me upfront of the risks (with any repair job), so I had a backup plan should the phone be too badly damaged to fix. I would recommend them in a second!

Shady as f*ck.
Went there to buy a used GalaxyS4 mini to harvest the digitizer and screen to replace on my phone. Guy behind the counter knows this and sells me the phone, handwriting no refunds, exchanges on the receipt. I get home and the screen is already cracked because it’d already been replaced before in the crappiest way not using the proper gorilla glass: basically a sheet of thin glass without any give.
Thankfully, my bf is an engineer and pretty good with consumer law in NY, so could break down why this is fraud and exactly what they did to the phone in the cheapest way possible to pass it off for sale.
Owner MAIK FUERSTENBERG owns another location in NY. Stay far away.

I had multiple phone screen and a laptop hinge repaired without any fuss.

They fixed 2 pair of headphones for me. One Sony one B&O both had the channels cutting out. Both pair were fixed to my satisfaction. Being that the headphones were expensive to replace it made sense to repair them.

Had to wait until I cooled off to write this.
So my samsung galaxy s4 had a cracked screen. Nothing major, since it was in the top right corner of the phone. It didn’t hinder any of the capabilities of my phone– I just wanted it fixed for cosmetic reasons.
I took it to Portatronics, and they said they said «No problem. We can have this done for you in an hour and a half for $ 99.» I thought «Great!» Big mistake.
I come back later to find they not only cant fix my phone, they’ve ruined it to the point that I can’t eve use it. Never in my life have I took something to get fixed, and the place ended up screwing up my item worse than before.
To add salt to injury, the guy said AFTER all this that there was a risk to doing the repair in the first place, and that they usually tell people that before they collect the money. Since no one told me anything about a risk, all they said was «no problem,» this infuriated me even more. Then he kept saying, «Yea I know how you must feel,» «I’d be frustrated too if I were you.» DUH. Of course you would. Idiot.
They offered me a crappy replacement phone to use for ONE WEEK while they fixed my phone. I said hell no, and demanded my money back. The damage was already done. There was no way I was going to deal with those people for another week.
So if you value your belongings, DON’T go to this place. It’s a scam, a waste of time, and filled with incompetent people. The people at this place are like little kids you think they can fix things, but just end up making a bigger mess out of

Beware! This company is awful. They have another location on 46^th. Street off 5^th. Ave. Read my review under that Unilocal listing got the horror story. If they botch your repair, and judging by their history, there is a good chance they will, they won’t refund your money.

I recently went to Portatronics because I have the 6^th generation iPod Nano (small square nano with touch screen), which is now by Apple’s standards obsolete. The issue was a very simple and common problem, but not a fix I would want to make on my own and Apple’s suggestion was to trade it in for 10% off of a newer model, which was not an option for me since the issue was the power button couldn’t compress and make connection. I brought it in, explained the issue which they had known of and previously repaired before. I got a call about an hour later, saying it was done. I went back the next day to pick it up, and pay and now it’s good as new. Zero complaints and will go back again in the future if necessary.

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I switched my phone provider a few days ago, I came to a store in NYC called PortaTronics at 307 38^th st Ny Ny. I was intending on switching to Simple Mobile because they have a $ 40 a month unlimited text, talk, and data plan; However The salesman there told me that a company I never heard of H2O was better for my iPhone and had the same unlimited deal as simple mobile. So I called H2o to speak with a phone rep about internet because it was not working, she told me I would have the unlimited Everything plan, so switched over and thought my new phone service plan would be good.
I was informed 2 days after I got the plan that the $ 40 plan only gave limited 20MB of data and then when I called and told them that I was told otherwise they said there was nothing they could do. I went back to PortaTronics to see if the store would help rectify the situation the clerk who sold me the sim card and told me to sign up for H2O refunded the $ 15 for the sim card and would not give me any additional money $ 40 to switch over to simple mobile. He was very unhelpful and made me very angry, he would not help me by taking responsibility and distributing a credit so I could switch to simple mobile. I informed him that I would pay back the $ 40 once I got it back but he refused to deliver extraordinary customer service.
Whats even more crazy! — I started typing this email/​review on Unilocal and the store owner literally GRABBED my hands and wrenched them away from the computer. We argued and I called the police to fill out a report, but when they got there they said they had to see the act or my hand had to be broken to file a report. This was the single most shitty experience I’ve ever had with a phone sales company and the supplier.
I left the store feeling very uncared for and bitter. This was a horrible place to go to do business simply because of the fact that they do not take care of their customers or seem to sympathize with their needs. I’m asking for a full refund and demand satisfactory customer service! I would not recommend this store to anyone, they basically took $ 40 from me at a time in life when I just don’t have it to throw away.
Looks like I am not able to have internet on my phone this month and these horrible companies practically stole my money.
~ Mike Antonucci

They can take my physical QWERTY keyboard Android phone with an unlimited 4G data plan when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
My T-​Mobile G2, the best damn phone out there if you need a keyboard like me (go ahead, try to navigate through Swype or virtual keyboard for an interrobang or a pipe delimiter — I’ll wait) but, if you’re like me and in a one-​income household thanks to the shitty disability coverage afforded to NJ public employees by the state (hint: there is none) due to my wife having a vestibular disorder, you don’t really have the option to buy a new phone off-​contract or give in, accepting the red-​hot rectal poker of a capped and throttled data plan for a new phone — which, again, QWERTY requirement, is not really going to happen.
Portatronics enters, swooping in like Zorro, fencing off the mooks and jerks who only do Iphone repairs because all people who use Apple devices have the intelligence level of overcaffeinated lemurs and just as much learning ability to use a real smartphone that requires learning stuff and things and such, and those of us who don’t have Steve Jobs’ DNA-​sucking wallet-​emptiers in our pockets may need our phones fixed.
I took my phone over after its headphone jack broke. I have a tablet, but using that as an MP3 player makes you look like Captain Douche from the Williamsburg Hipster Brigade since everyone assumes it’s an Ipad. For the record, I paid $ 160 for my Touchpad and rooted it to Android, equating it with $ 300 devices. Suck it, Ipad hipsters, suck it long and hard until it gets to bare metal which then gives you cancer.
Anyway, for $ 59, they said they could fix the jack and even offered me a free loaner phone. I paid the deposit for the phone, an old Blackberry Bold which was like going from a Testarossa to a Trabant with a dead, decomposing racoon in the engine compartment, and three days later, I got an email that it was fixed and ready to go. They refunded the deposit minus $ 59 back to my credit card. Best of all, 90 day warranty — bring the phone back if the headphone jack goes bad again, and they’ll fix it free.
The headphone jack is working great, the phone came back in fine shape, and now I can bring my commute back to the blissful, atmo DnB-​soaked oblivion of isolation from the faceless hordes in Penn Station and 8^th Ave, knowing that I can safely drown out the world that would otherwise scream, demand, and claw its way into my attention span — sorry, world, until I’m back answering IT service calls, my world is my own, thanks to my phone and some top-​class repairs done by Portatronics.
Why only four stars instead of five? Well, A) no immediate repair option, and B) in this day and age if you don’t have unlocked or T-​Mobile compatible phones, it really sucks having to use a lightweight battery-​efficient phone that requires a bajillion and a half keystrokes to DO anything. Still, though, for being right around the corner from my office and offering mail-​in service for the rest of the world, I can’t complain too much.
Portatronics deserves your business.