Glad I'm not the only one who manages to order just one slightly incorrect part for every hardware project I work on.
8 legs to desolder, on a 6 layer board, where the pads are going to be small (because of pin density) and where the component shape means you can't just cut the thing off and take the pins out individually. The click-through legs of the socket make it harder to apply heat to the pads and wobble the component out (which you shouldn't do anyway, but people do.)
And then the new connectors need to be soldered back on.
Would it be difficult even if they had some equipment to precisely maintain temps and suck out the solder? Does such equipment even exist?
(http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/soldering-stations/0165396/)
For a small quantity of items you can get "solder suckers" which are spring loaded pumps with a high temp nozzle. You have that in one with the iron in the other hand. You'd clean the pads with solder wick afterwards.
If this thing was surface mount, or had a hidden heat-sink pad in the center of the die, that would be way tricker. Nothing an assembly shop couldn't handle, but kind of getting beyond typical DIY work.
For sure. It gently depends on how many layers the boards are; if any of the pins is on a large ground plane (heatsinking) or if the solder side pads are flimsy.
But I'm grateful for the correction! I have some horror stories about rework, so maybe they've tinged everything since.