I want to start an iphone repair business. What is the best way to tell if a parts website is legitimate?

If you are serious about importing parts then i would suggest actually travelling to china and going to the manufacturers of the parts and seeing that the place actually exists, also you need to find out more about the quality and compatibility of the parts that you intend to import.

Depending on your country you can usually find out how much you might need to pay to import depending on what you are importing from government websites, here in the UK for example it will cost more to bring certain types of products in.

I imported something years ago, it included dangerous chemicals, shortly after i received two separate invoices from fedex to a total of around £300, i wasn't expecting this.

I read of someone bringing in italian sofas into the UK, at least thats what they expected, they opened the container and it was filled with sand.

You also need to find out what payment options they have, still some parts of china are a bit behind when it comes to payment processing.

Proceed with caution.

Given that Apple products are so proprietary, I'm surprised that anyone would be selling spare parts for iPhones & iPods. Maybe they are "compatible", but it seems unlikely to be original parts, unless from a dubious source.

As for import taxes, that is something that depends on your location. Most governments will help with international trade, to some extent, so it should be possible for you to find out.

You can test the legitimacy of the site by going to visit them, as John suggested, or by asking them what credit terms they'd be willing to extend to you, and judge by their reaction.

have you looked at icracked.com ? the are a ycombinator company, have a itech franchise opportunity, and manage the supply chain so you don't have to worry.