It’s not the cost of the parts that bothers me, it’s the cost of messing up and breaking a $1100 iPhone. 
I’ll be replacing a loud fan in my MacBook Air soon since that seems within my skill set and it’s an old machine. And Tristan and I are looking forward to trying to bake the GPU card of an old iMac that’s not working—that will be hard but there’s no real liability if we fail or make it worse. But with iPhones, if I have an official option (which I do, here in the US), I’ll take it.
And here’s a story that casts some doubt on the capabilities of Apple support and repair. Sure, it’s a freaky outlier (and user error) but it’s shocking that experienced techs didn’t pick this up more quickly.
All this makes me think the European’s are on to something with the proposed right to repair law. How will Apple be able to preserve their repair monopoly when this is enacted one wonders…
This issue is not getting better.
There’s no Apple Stores in Ireland either.
There’s Authorized Service Centers, other companies who use Apple parts etc. However half the time, they take a quick look and suggest within a minute or two “It’s gone, get a new one, Apple offer upgrades if you trade it in” and go back to whatever job makes economic sense to them.
I’ve often left kit until my next trip stateside, bring it into the store in Manhattan and go about my day, collecting it at the end of day.
Same for New Zealand.