I've noticed this in China where repairs are far more common, faster, and cheaper --- e.g. in the West the usual repair on laptops consists of swapping parts like motherboards, but over there you can walk into a repair shop and have component-level troubleshooting and replacement done by someone with a hot air gun/soldering iron while you wait and watch, for cheaper than the cost of a whole new assembly. Ditto for mobile phones. There's also far more recycling/reuse going on there too, which while it may be a bit unscrupulous, could be somewhat better for the environment.
Do not let them repair your phone out of sight though. They'll fix your problem but a new one will pop up next week because they've swapped some of the parts that weren't broken.
It was also still cheaper for us to get a new washer machine than have the old (landlord's even!) fixed. At least we don't have to worry about a dryer :)
