987/997 door handles
 

The 987/997 has a flaw where the internal door handle mechanism can break, leaving the handle inside functional but floppy.

Fortunately, the parts are not expensive and the fix is pretty straightforward--pull the door card off, put in the new mechanism, and away you go. Removing the door card takes trim pry tools, some patience, and a Torx T-20 and T-30 bit.

The interior part was only about $25, but I took the opportunity to swap the silver plastic handle inside, as well, since mine was kind of hacked up and scratched. That cost $165, for some reason, but was purely cosmetic.

In fact, once I had the door apart, I couldn't find a broken piece. I suspect that like the poster here, the spring on the latch had just slipped. But since I had the new part and it was only $25, I swapped it in anyway.

The standard interior 991s (non extended leather) have door panels that separate... big issue for a lot of owners.
And if your door pocket detaches you need a whole new panel to replace at $1650. Lucky for me, I have extended leather so separation isn't an issue and my floppy pocket was replaced under warranty.

Seems like porsche has a tradition of shitty door engineering.

Good job fixing it

OK, a little more on this.

The new latches came with a new cable that has an updated attachment method. Running the cable requires more door dissassembly than I wanted to do, and I'd read that you can just use the new latch with the old cable, so I did that.

And it worked...until it didn't. And, pro tip, when it stops working, the door won't open from the outside, either, which is awkward. Fortunately, the failure was intermittent and I got the car open.

So, the work around for this is to install the top of the old latch (the part that rotates) on the bottom of the new latch (the part that screws to the door). It's actually a little plastic tab on the bottom of the old latch that broke; that tab is what the spring rests against, and it's what provides tension. The tab cracked and flexed, so it's breakage wasn't obvious until you pushed on it.

Interesting note--the bottom of the latch is the same part R/L, just flipped. So, in theory, if your RH latch breaks, you could just swap it with the LH latch. But, again, the new part is $23, so...it's not really worth disassembling two doors.