Inquisitive Universe: Hello and an excellent evening to you. So two weeks ago whilst my brother was playing Resident Evil 5, the PS3 crackled loudly and suddenly emitted loud bangs, flashes of light and thick white smoke. We immediately disconnected only to retry it and got the exact same results so we just put it away. Today we went to Enerhen junction to have it checked and fixed. The repair guy simply said, you need to have the whole power block changed and I'm like why? Won't you open it up and see if there's a transistor, resistor, capacitor or something that can be changed? He simply said no. In the end, after a lot of back and forth bargaining, I parted with 10K and he fished out a power block from somewhere in the store. It was obviously not brand new. In fact, the power block on mine that was bad actually looked better than his. The key thing is that it worked. As soon as he removed the power block, I told my brother to take it and hold on to it. He apparently noticed but said nothing. When we were about to leave, he was like, are you taking that with you? I said yes with my full chest. Ah bros 😅, wetin you wan use am take do. Na dirty na, drop am. But I refused to let him have it. After having extensively let the PS3 run for 30 mins, we left leaving him disappointed. Now why am I telling you this story? This year 2025, I have gotten a few DMs about people who went to change their batteries, especially batteries, that turned out to be worse than the ones that they replaced. This is something that I was very guilty of in the past because I didn't think too much about it. I'm sure that a lot of us probably did the same. When I visit a repair shop and the part I want has been fixed, I usually leave the faulty part with them and call it a day. Phone's fixed, nothing more to worry about. Right? Wrong! Very few technicians are honest enough to discard that faulty part. A good many will actually try to repair that faulty part for resale to another customer. Others won't even bother. They'll probably just sell the faulty part as is to the next hapless customer that comes their way. This is especially true, again, for batteries. Batteries, especially when they are kept in good condition and not swollen could easily be passed off as new or fairly used to unsuspecting customers. This is one of the ways that many repair people cheat their others. I know I will get some clap back for this but it's high time we start calling out this unprofessional behavior. If you are a repair technician and you do not do it, it's fine. I'm not referring to you. I'm talking to the cheats and rogues. The ones who sell fake batteries or dead batteries and shrug their shoulders saying, "that's how it is, you never know which ones are good, it's a matter of luck". The thing is we're all a part of the problem. If we all left these stores with our faulty parts and properly disposed of them, there'll be less of these substandard parts in the market. I personally believe the power brick of this PS3 can be fixed so I'll be holding on to it till I can create the time to find someone competent to fix it. If not, I'll discard myself instead of leaving it to be sold to someone else. In 2022 when I cracked my RN9 Pro after it slipped from my wet hands one wet July evening. I took my screen home with me after replacing it. It's still in a carton on my drawer. All I need to do is replace the broken touch (digitizer) with another. The LCD under is still unharmed. If more and more people left repair stores with their faulty parts which they came to replace, it will quickly stem this practice of fake this or fake that. So the next time you go to a store and you want to leave with the faulty part. Either ask them to buy it from you or ask them to leave you the heck alone. Nothing is free in Freetown. In the case of batteries, please never sell or leave it with them. They could re-sell it back to you tomorrow. The complaints of fake batteries have become too many. It's why I tend to advise people to avoid very old flagships. It's not because I have anything against the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 or the Mi 10. No. I usually worry about the battery. Those phones are well over 4-5 years old. An Urhobo child will say the "battery don mekangban". Hausa will say "ana la laçce". I'm doing my part, please endeavor to do yours as well. Cheers 🥂