So, I see a lot of cheap fairphones on ebay, and, at least from what I can tell, they’re the exact same as the one being sold by murena here in the US for $500. I’ve seen some on ebay that are almost half the price. What do you all think?
Welcome to the community forum.
Could you please give some example links?
Here’s something to consider …
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Warranty (and Fairphone’s special extended warranty of 2+3 years) is something else to consider here. From what I know, Murena is still the only official Fairphone reseller in the USA, so they would be the safest bet in that respect.
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Non-US here, but I went with Murena for my FP5 because of the warranty and /e/OS. When you register it, you have to select where you purchased it from and provide proof for the warranty; it was easy enough to do though. I don’t know if you would get any warranty with an unofficial vendor/drop-shipper.
So far, I have been completely happy with mine & now they have a free extra battery promo for a few weeks.
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I aggree with the others (especially because I’ve met so many scamers on ebay) but you could still go the riskier route and purchase it anways. Provided it’s OK to lose some money and go through minor trouble in case it goes south. If it turns out that indeed the phone isn’t working you could still sell the spare parts (display, USB port, case…), no problem. That’s the great part about Fairphones.
No guarantees though.
Again be warned about the risks involved.
Also, like others already mentioned. There are a lot of promo events currently, incl. having brand new and cheaper phones (with reduced specs) to be officially distributed alongside the currently offered (full specs) FP5 and FP4… soon.
This is what I’m looking at right now. Ebay has a pretty good return policy, so if it’s locked that wouldn’t be an issue.
Fairphone 4 256GB 8GB RAM Factory Unlocked 6.3" IPS 48.0MP FedEx | eBay
I import a lot of items from different vendors.
Coming from Japan you’ll have to deal with customs and the import tax. I don’t know your tax there, my last order from China (tablets) was around 40% of the purchase price; every country is different though; I would contact your customs office to find out the exact charges first.
Regarding the tablets, FedEx then kept sending me a bill weekly for the import charges, which I had previously paid online. Their local office even mailed me a letter threatening legal action, I had to provide bank proof of payment and that was the end of it; I’ll never knowingly use FedEx again.
For my last shipment (not a phone) that was “lost/stolen” during shipping, before reaching my country’s local shipping provider, it took more than 70 days to get the money back in my account.
It’s really a gamble if you want to try or not. Can you be without that money for months waiting for a refund? Do you want to spend the time dealing with their support if something goes wrong?
I also noticed in the ad, that the seller provides the service and the warranty, that is something in itself you should look into. When they write processing fee, how much is that? How do you send the goods back and what is the fee?
Good Luck.
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I had a 100% positive experience purchasing my FP4 off of ebay.