When your phone craps out on you, it can feel like your entire world is crumbling around you.
For better or for worse, Americans have become incredibly dependent on various electronics like cell phones, because the have completely revolutionized the way that people work, interact, and develop and maintain social bonds.
If that piece of technology suddenly gets taken away, it can be a major shock.
Which is why you completely freaked out when your phone went on the fritz, and you took it into the Apple store only to be told that you needed to buy a new iPhone 3g logic board if you ever wanted it to work again.
Unfortunately, this new iPhone 3g logic board would cost you an arm and a leg, so close to the value of the phone itself that you started to wonder if you might as well just scrap the whole "fixing" plan and instead skip ahead to buying one.
But, wait - not so fast! Getting your hands on a relatively inexpensive iPhone 3g logic board is not as impossible as it might have seemed when you were sitting there in the Apple Store talking with the technician, In fact, the wild world of the Internet is full of all kinds of places where you can get a used iPhone 3g logic board for a fraction of what you would have paid for the new ones.
How do these websites work that offer to see you used electronics? Usually, they are in contract with businesses and private individuals that want to see their equipment.
Maybe they had to lay off some staff, and are now selling their old company cell phones to try and recover some of the cost.
Or maybe an individual has traded up for a new, fancier device, and does not mind the idea of someone paying for his or her old cell phone parts! After all, even the wealthy among us enjoy getting a little bit of extra cash in hand.
So these businesses and these individuals sell their old cell phones and old cell phone parts to these companies, who in turn put them on the market for people like you to buy.
Now this is where you come in as the buyer.
Some people frequent these websites because they want a "brand new" phone.
Perhaps they want an upgrade in technology, but they are not necessarily willing to pay the hundreds of dollars for the latest brand that just hit the market.
Well, they are in luck: they can pay a fraction of the cost for a phone that was released, say, 10 years ago.
But this business model is also great for people just like you, who need their cell phones repaired.
Instead of ordered directly from Apple corporation and paying a premium, you can turn to one of these companies to browse their inventory to find your very own gently used iPhone 3g logic board.
Clearly, this situation is positive for everyone involved.
You will come out with a working phone, and a heavier wallet.