Fair? Not really

Discuss The Industry
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I’m extremely disappointed and a bit angry by the response I received from the support.

I purchased a FP2 in sept 2015 and started to experience the random reboots/stops one year ago.

At the time the problem was not extremely annoying and continued to use my phone, it started to be so few days ago and I decided to open it for the first time to see if can spot a loose connection somewhere. It did not help so I opened a case on the support, I went through all their workarounds without luck.

I then received a template that my phone is out of warranty because I received it more than two years ago. Cost to repair is min 378.5€!
This is something I can’t afford and I responded that I was very disappointed to have received such template since I purchased the phone very early and waited 6 months to receive the phone.

They replied this to me:

I’ve talked internally about your case, since you were one of the firsts [ed. thanks]. But unfortunately there is nothing we can do for the following reasons:

You said you have those random reboots for around one year, as it is explained in our Terms & Conditions you have agreed to when buying the Fairphone 2, you need to report any defect with the device within maximal of 2 months after discovery to us. You can read this in as first thing under Claiming your warranty, unfortunately you did not do this.

I conclude that fairphone is this kind of commercial company that hides behind their Terms & Conditions without even trying to listen/trust their early customers.

I strongly advise future buyers to take this into account and not believe they’ll join a movement where they’ll be heard by this company, you’ll just be another random customer…

I also strongly advise against supporting the company by any crowdsourcing/pre-ordering. The only thing I’ve got back is a simple mark “One of the first 17418” on the back of the phone internal components. Don’t expect more… if you have extra money to spend better to directly support NGOs.

So in the end my FP2 is dead (nearly unusable) after 2 years and a half (built to last?). I’m pretty sure the defect is a core design issue by looking at the number of similar reports.

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Other than opening the phone, what have you tried already to try and resolve this? Have you determined it’s definitely not a software problem? Have you tried to reset and reinstall?

You’ve described not too annoying random reboots, but what’s happened more recently, you haven’t said? Is it still reboots that is the issue or something different? The random reboots aren’t necessarily hardware related and doesn’t necessarily indicate you’ll have future problems either.

I’m sorry you feel you’ve had a bad experience but I’m not sure what you expected as an out of warranty repair. Being one of the first to own one doesn’t mean you have a free pass to have an extended warranty, and having one of the first phones doesn’t mean it’s of a lesser quality and therefore more prone to defects. It’s definitely not. Other than having a new case, mine is still running well without problem. I do have the occasional random reboot, mostly when my phone is still charging and the battery is nearly fully charged, but I believe it’s a software bug that’s not yet been fixed (I had a similar problem on am Android HTC handset)

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Well, in reality, Fairphone is a commercial enterprise and not a welfare social enterprise. While I can understand your frustration, FP would definitely go out of business very fast, trying to selflessly give out new devices (would this be economical and good for the environment? I think no).
Also, I don’t think there’s anything near a realistic statistical value in people ranting about their phone or support, while still lots of phones seem to work very well, and people don’t see any reason to post about this. (I said this in another thread, mines running since end of 2015, more or less flawlessly, And while I had a fair amount of reboots whith LOS14, after upgrading to LOS 15 they are gone… And, to be fair, it looks like they were caused by some file system corruption, which I propably traded for while navigating in car with the phone hooked to a holder near to the windshield, that is, way too hot)

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4

Thanks for sharing your story, the real lesson here seems to me … current users and future buyers should read the terms, they are no gimmick we can just disregard …

Stomping your feet and feeling entitled instead doesn’t seem to work.

But, as was pointed out already, perhaps not all is lost, please have a look at the #rebootsguide .
If you happen to have #fairphoneangels in your vicinity, they could perhaps take a look, too.

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Other than opening the phone, what have you tried already to try and resolve this? Have you determined it’s definitely not a software problem? Have you tried to reset and reinstall?

I spent 3 days on it, and yes I reset it and reinstalled it but the problem is still here, it now stops more than 20 times a day.
I whish the core module was “openable” but it does not seem so…

Being one of the first to own one doesn’t mean you have a free pass to have an extended warranty

Indeed, but I was expecting to be trusted when I said that the problem happened one year ago. If I had opened a case at this time I would have had the core module replaced under the warranty. This is what I find unfair, this is the kind of response we all hate from classic commercial companies that I was expecting not to hear from this one.

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I think that you should try to see the perspective of the person on the other side of the line. The customer support employee follows company rules and would violate them if he/she grants you a repair under warranty. I don’t think that they have many options in a case such as yours.

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7

I do understand why you feel let down, but it’s not a matter of whether you are believed or not. The issue is that you didn’t act.

I think it would be difficult for anyone to say with certainty that your current problem is related to the previously problem… It could be entirely coincidental unfortunately. Unless you can prove faulty workmanship or a design flaw.

Sorry, I know it’s not what you want, but unfortunately out of warranty claims are like trying to claim on an insurance policy you’ve already cancelled or has expired

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Relating to “random reboots” we just recently helped some other user in this case.
It was the third (replaced) FP2 with random reboots. Hope was almost gone, but it showed that the problem was also some interference with a wifi network access point. At last the FP2 was working ok and the problem was not entirely FP2 related.

This case changed my overal point of view that not all troubles with the phone are purely caused by the phone itself and also more focus has to be put on unexpectedly external conditions.

I have phone no.9601 and it works flawless.

We also had a topic about this shortly.

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@anon87905765 You still haven’t told us what you tried already (unless opening the phone took you 3 days) or given us a lot of other information that helps us help you, like: What OS are you running?, or when do the reboots happen? E.g. do they happen in a specific Wifi?, when the phone runs hot?, while using specific apps (even in the background - e.g. Facebook)?, when the phone is put on the table?,…

This is a community forum, so here you get help from community members, who are not bound to a 2-year warranty, but are willing to take their time to help you for free no matter how old your phone is.
This is what we are here for and what we can offer. We are not here to listen to rants about things we can’t change.

So if you want our help, please post info we can use to help you in the #fairphone2help category (e.g. in this topic). If you just want to rant please do so elsewhere.

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Fair enough, I started another thread in F2 help.
Thank you.

As for the rant I’m sorry if this is not the appropriate channel, but I believe it’s important to warn users about the bad experiences they may suffer with this company by sharing our own experiences.

FP2 is the first smartphone I ever bought, it was extremely expensive as compared to others. It was claimed to be built to last, to be “repairable”, and I really appreciated the ideas behind but honestly I can’t pay again 400€ (that’d mean a total cost of 929€…) and I don’t feel that I did something wrong…
I now feel that I made a horrible mistake and really consider about going back to good-old-non-smart phones, these ones are really built to last and I’ll probably better support the planet this way.

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Thanks.

It is. But repairable is not the same as unlimited warranty.

You’re the only one who could have prevented you from having to pay for a replacement part by claiming warranty on time. The FP2 may be your first smartphone, but I’m sure it’s not your first electronic device so you’re probably familiar with a 2 year warranty on electronics.

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Hi @anon87905765,

I am not technically experienced enough to help you with the reboot problems, hopefully you get help at the places others in this thread directed you to.

But every now and then I like to advocate some perspective changes.
Just some rough thoughts:

  • We in Europe cry “not fair” when we face potential loss of 500 Euro over a broken device. In Congo people may cry “not fair” over a lost limb, poisoning or a lost life while digging for the resources for our precious gadgets. (I know that to some extend I am going out on a limb here because I do not know anything about you. And maybe you are even a refugee and have worked in one of the dangerous mines)
  • Every other Fairphone customer relies on company Fairphone not granting ‘endless’ warranty to other customers. Cause that could send the company into bankruptcy, meaning an end to the production of spare parts.
  • I do not think that a lot of people at Fairphone are getting very rich by ripping their customers Instead I think they try (probably understuffed) to make the world a little better, as pathetic as that may sound. This also means that while we customers spend a little more money than usual on our smartphone the FP employees probably earn less than they could when working for other companies.
  • Company Fairphone is ‘only’ reconnecting existing players (e.g. mines, assemblers, software providers). If all these had the highest standards, there’d be far less faulty FP devices. The bigger Fairphone gets, the more impact it can have on these players. So: yes, please everybody: keep supporting Fairphone, keep pre-ordering when possible and so on! There aren’t so many others trying to fundamentally improve the fields targeted by FP!
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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: FP2 randomly stops/reboots

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Sorry, but if wifi causes the phone to reboot it’s totally the fault of the phone. Imagine that you have a laptop that reboots because of a wifi.

I’m really sick of reading ‘but my phone works’. Not everybody writes in this forum what a crappy product they bought either. It’s great that I can repair my FP2. But it’s not great that I actually replaced most of the phone after 2 years. Built to last? Now two years are over and I have reboots again and a flickering screen. The white slim case I’ve got is not just plain ugly but does not fit to the phone (I didn’t get a replacement even in the warranty) and is as robust as an eggshell too. I’m done with Fairphone.

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If a laptop runs Windows (backed by billions of dollars), macOS (backed by billions of dollars) or Linux (backed by thousands of developers), it is unlikely for that thing to happen.

If Google (backed by billions of dollars) screwed up the whole software system of its open source OS Android then it’s their fault. (It’s cumbersome to point fingers and search for a culprit. Maybe it’s the fault of the WiFi router’s manufacturer?) The problem here is that no phone model shares the same kernel and OS, even if they are on the same version. Changes most often don’t get pushed upstream, so if Samsung (backed by billions of dollars) fixes a critical Android issue with a small subset of WiFi routers, Fairphone (backed by 2.5 million Euro and ~5 developers) doesn’t automatically benefit from those fixes.

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Funny how you don’t want to hear of working phones, but still postulate any (not specific) number of people who have problems. In fact, there is no (serious) statistic in how many defects there really are…

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I didn’t say that I wouldn’t want to hear of working phones. Actually I would like to hear that all the phones are working. If your phone works 5 years without replacing half of it, please share it with everybody. Everybody here wants a fair phone that is sustainable. But if the Fairphone has problems you should talk about them because it is the only way to make it better.

I don’t need to postulate any number of people who have problems. The repeating answer ‘but my phones works’ in this forum when people have a lot of problems with their phone was the reason I wrote about my problems in the first place. I was the one those answer often postulated to not exist. It’s just not helpful. If you want to solve problems you have to acknowledge them first.

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This is a community forum and the community can only help people with specific problems with their phones, not fix problems that all FPs have (if such shall exist).
The “mine works” answer is a logical reaction to people posting about their problems as though they were problems with all FPs, because you can only help someone fix their problem once they acknowledge that it’s their problem and not every FP owner’s.

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Thanks for pointing that out. It’s a big problem. Google tries to push phone companies to participate upstream. I think they announced it 3 years ago…?! Did something change since then?

My point was not that it’s the Fairphone developers’ fault. My point was that it’s the technical fault of the phone. Even if the router doesn’t comply with wifi standards it must not cause a reboot of the phone, laptop or whatever. You have to fix it on the side of the phone.

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So all the common issues are just singularities? I think that would complicate the support of the community.

Just an example what I don’t understand about the process at Fairphone. Maybe someone can explain it to me. The first generation case broke because the two materials decided to go their own way. I understand that you may not see that coming when designing such a product. But with the slim case I got the feeling that it was totally untested. Two things that happened to my case: The white case accumulates all the colors of my clothes. The phone rebooted a heck lot of times because of the power button that was too big. Usually you get test specimens before buying the whole bunch of production. So you can correct such design flaws. Why didn’t that happen?

PS: In some support forums there are even rules that suggest not to post ‘I don’t have your problem’ answers. They don’t help and just clutter the thread.

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