Above: The UBreakIFix Oxford Team left to right: Gage Wright, Branden Perkins, Elliotte Tatum, Kyle McGrevey, and Dustin Weeks. Right: UBreakIFix owner Kyle McGrevey. Photographs by Newt Rayburn.
Oxford’s Favorite Computer Nerd Kyle McGrevey is celebrating 20 years of business this month. We chatted with him about his journey starting out with a university IT job, to starting Express Computer Service, and now UBreakIFix. His shop is located at 1501 Jackson Ave West next to Firehouse Subs and has a 4.8/5 star rating on Google, for good reason–Kyle’s shop has always maintained the highest standard of service and has hundreds of loyal customers. Read on to find out about his stellar 20 years in business.
How did you get started running a computer repair service 20 years ago? Were you working out of your house?
I had a job on campus at Weir Hall in the IT department at Ole Miss. I didn’t realize that people actually did this and made money, but there were people who came in needing help that [IT] didn’t provide. There was a list of students they could call and pay them for repairs, and I realized that I knew how to do it all, so I got my name on the list and started getting calls. Very quickly I started making more than I did at the help desk there, so I expanded from there. It turned into a full-time job basically overnight.
Were you one of those kids that always just had a computer, and was tearing it apart?
Oh yeah, for sure. I built my first computer when I was, I think, ten. Like for Christmas from Santa. I used to have to give my mom detailed lists of the parts that I wanted and where to buy them, so she knew what to get. I wanted RAM or a hard drive or whatever.
When I met you, you had a desk inside Copy Time, which is now The Lyric.
Yep, and we were basically just working in a hallway. From 2004–2005 I was out of my house and strictly just did house calls, driving to people’s locations. And then we moved into that spot in the Lyric around ‘05 to ‘06. We were busy at the Lyric, and I was I was busy out of my house. But when we moved into the spot on Jackson Avenue with more visibility, and of course, more and more people have computers. When I first came to Ole Miss, you still turned in a lot of stuff handwritten, and most people didn’t have computers. If you did, it was a desktop. Nobody had laptops, right? [Most people] had to go to the computer lab if they wanted to use a computer.
It was kind of right then when it was transitioning to where people were using them more. Laptops became reasonably priced, and people started getting them, students started using them. That was when malware became a thing, pop-up ads hadn’t existed [before], and now everybody was getting on the Internet. So it was good timing, getting on it when everybody started to get computers more and depending on them. And coupled with all of a sudden all these nefarious actors coming in like virus and malware.
Now you get desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, and I’m sure other stuff. What’s the breakdown of percentage that you fix here?
Right, and we fix tons of PlayStations as well. We get lots of game consoles. But I’d say these days, we’re probably 40 percent computers, probably like 45 ish percent phones, and then the rest is game consoles and miscellaneous stuff. There’s a robotic vacuum cleaner over there. You can see some speakers. People want some soldering. So we get random stuff. I remember, I think in 2006 or 07, I was riding around the square on a motorcycle and there was an original iPhone 3G laying on the ground that fell out of somebody’s car. I stopped and picked it up. It had a cracked screen, and I actually fixed it. Like tracked the guy down. And then I was like, oh we can we can fix phones now. I guess we’ll start doing it. I had no idea it was going to become a majority of our business.
What year did you switch over from Express Computer Service to UbreakIfix, and why did you decide to do that?
I think that was 2019. It was to get a lot of national partnerships. UbreakIfix is an authorized Samsung Service Center, authorized Google Service Center. We do all the Asurion and all the insurance work for AT&T and Verizon and Cricket and several other big companies—these big national contracts I wouldn’t have been able to land as an independent store. So I joined them for that [reason], and it was a big change. But it’s proven to be good. It’s really kept us alive and allowed us to expand way beyond what I could have done by myself.
How much did it add to your business?
A lot. Because now we do all the insurance work, basically all the carriers just send people here by default. You know, even if it’s maybe not insurance work. Especially as phones have gotten more complex and expensive to work on. For instance, like the late model phones are $400-plus to fix. Hardly anybody pays that, but the people with insurance come in, and it’s free for them. We’re constantly getting those in. Otherwise, people probably wouldn’t spend that much.
In 2022, you sold your store, what happened?
A big international insurance company bought UbreakIfix as a corporate entity, and then they decided they wanted to run all the stores at a corporate level rather than owned by franchisees. So they made offers to a lot of the owners and said, we’ll take over your store. I definitely needed a break. I was starting to get kind of worn out, and it was a pretty good offer, so I took it. I felt bad. I felt like I was losing my identity, you know? But it was nice that I had time off, about 13 months. I traveled a lot, and slept, ate on The Square a lot. I went to Istanbul for like a month, did a lot of traveling around the US.
Then they changed the strategy. Rather than focusing on corporate running them, they wanted more local owners, people more invested at a local level. So, they ended up reselling the stores. I had to bid on it against other owners. In the system, they only sold to top performers, and luckily I had opened a store in Tupelo that kept me in the running, or I wouldn’t have been able to buy it back. But our Tupelo store was running so well that it qualified me to make an offer to get this store back.
You have the Tupelo store, the Oxford store, and something in Alabama too?
That’s right. About the same time that I took the store back here, I launched operations in Huntsville and Birmingham. We don’t have actual storefronts there, we just drive around in vans and fix stuff at people’s homes. But they’re super busy
With all this is on your plate, what are your hours like?
Oh geez, all day every day. Literally. I wake up at 7:30 or 8:00 and start working on the van stuff. And then I come in here, see what’s going on in Tupelo. Whenever I get out of here, I go get a bite to eat on the Square and then work for a few more hours at the house before I go to sleep. It’s definitely a stark contrast to when I was retired. It’s running pretty good. We’ve got a good team in place. It takes a lot, don’t get me wrong, but I mean, I have really good people running the place.
Talk about some of the more unusual repair jobs you’ve had to do.
We regularly see a significant other that have beaten things with bats, like PlayStation or computers or things like that. Sometimes we get to hear about a little drama about, oh, you know, my girlfriend or boyfriend took a bat to my PlayStation, or, you know, threw my computer out the window against the wall and stuff. That’s kind of kind of a common one. We’ve had a possum that fell through the roof at a guy’s office and ripped all the keys out and then used the bathroom on it. That was an interesting one. I’ve seen a bunch of computers that people have thrown up on, things of that nature. I’d say probably 60 percent of our spills are some sort of alcohol related. You can smell the natty or wine or whatever it is.
What’s something you want to talk about that I haven’t asked?
As far as going forward, it’s just getting busier and busier. There have been years that I’ve thought this is only going to last a certain amount of time, but Iit’s been going for a while. Now that I’mk ind of back in the mix, I see running this for the foreseeable future. I’m not planning on leaving Oxford or anything like that. I definitely planon keeping this business strong and maintaining it and supporting the community.
It seems youve gotten into a more relaxed work stride.
Luckily, I have a real good team in place that I can depend on. We figured out a lot of stuff with trial and error. I’m definitely less stressed than before I sold it, and somehow doing more. I’m not quite sure how that works.
I guess one of the main parts of [starting a business] was to afford to eat [out]. I wanted to eat at L&M and Two Stick, and I definitely couldn’t afford it at the time. That was a motivating factor.
I love all of Oxford’s restaurants, you know. I’m pretty much on The Square almost every night having dinner, and I love all our local favorites—SoLa, City Grocery, Snackbar, Jinsei. We have the Oxford restaurant scene to thank for the repair shop here.
Congrats on 20 years and I hope you have continued success for many more!
