Seven ways repair shops order the wrong part

The mistakes that actually cost money, drawn from how compatibility data really behaves.

None of these are exotic. They are the ordinary, repeatable errors that turn a ten-minute job into a second trip to the supplier.

1. Ordering by screen size

Covered at length elsewhere, but it heads the list because it's the most common. The diagonal is one number describing a shape. Cutout position, curvature and bezel width are not encoded in it.

Two part groups in our data are both listed at 6.4 inches and are not interchangeable.

2. Assuming 4G and 5G variants share a part

Same marketing name, same screen size, same general appearance — and sometimes a different front assembly. Manufacturers revise panels between radio variants without renaming the phone.

When a customer says "it's the 5G one", write that down. It is a real distinguishing fact, not a detail.

3. Trusting "fits all" listings

A marketplace listing claiming a protector fits every 6.5-inch phone is making a commercial claim, not a technical one. Ask the supplier for their part or group number instead, and reorder by that.

4. Reading a model name from a case

Cases are swapped, sold second-hand, and frequently generic. The name printed on a case tells you what the case was made for, not what's inside it. Check the phone.

5. Ignoring regional variants

The same name can ship different panels in different markets. If a phone was bought abroad, verify the model number from Settings → About phone rather than assuming.

6. Treating an ambiguous match as a clean one

Some phones genuinely appear under more than one part group. In our current data four models do — the source spreadsheet lists them twice, and it does not record which one applies to a given handset.

The wrong response is to pick the more common one and hope. The right response is to measure, dry-fit, and quote both codes to your supplier. Where a model is ambiguous, this site shows both candidates and refuses to rank them, because the underlying data genuinely does not say.

7. Not dry-fitting

Ten seconds, before the backing comes off. Hold the glass over the phone and check the earpiece slot, the camera cutout and all four corners. An unpeeled protector goes back in the drawer; a peeled one is scrap.

A routine that avoids most of this

Identify the exact model and variant from the phone itself, not the case or the customer's memory.
Look up the part code.
If two codes come back, measure and compare before ordering.
Order by part code and record the supplier's own code alongside it.
Dry-fit before peeling.

The whole sequence adds perhaps a minute to a job. It removes nearly every error above.

Keeping your own records

When you find a supplier code that corresponds to a part group, write it down somewhere permanent. Compatibility knowledge in one person's head is a liability — it walks out when they do, and it can't be checked by anyone else on a busy afternoon.

That's the entire reason this site exists: the knowledge was in a spreadsheet, and a spreadsheet is not something you can search one-handed with a customer waiting.