Fairphone really has to sort out its warranty support

Discuss The Industry
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It is now over two weeks since I raised a ticket about my FP2 having poor or no signal. No reply of any kind so far. This is simply unacceptable.

Regardless of how ethical the material and labour is sourced, I seriously cannot recommend FP to anyone I know as long as the support is as poor as this. This not an ethical way to treat paying customers.

It doesn’t seem to have got better since I had a problem with FP1 which took months to get a proper resolution (by which time FP tried to claim it was then “out of warranty”)

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That’s shocking. Have you tried phoning them to chase?

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Do have a low or poor signal everywhere? Did you contact your provider, maybe it is a problem with the SIM settings or the network?
You could try a SIM card from friends to cross-check if it is the phone or the network.

If you did not receive a feedback from Fairphone I would suggest to call them during their supportdesk hours:
Monday to Friday 9:30 - 17:30 at +31 (0)20-788 4400
https://support.fairphone.com/

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There is a bit of delay (1-2 weeks) in getting a reply from support right now, but it will come back to normal soon (holiday season + more requests than anticipated)

Adrian (customer support)

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i wait for two weeks now, for an answer from the support. And he is right that is not acceptable. not even blizzard has this response time during a new addon, and im pretty sure they have more tickets than you with a new addon

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Wow. Inventive even if meaningless comparison of the day already :trophy:

There’s no way to defend Fairphone’s current state of affairs with e-mail support judging by the experiences shared in the forum, and assuming the situation should supposedly be better since mid July. They certainly have to sort that out very quickly.

But that statement is quite something. Total disregard of the respective industry, total disregard of the number of support staff involved on either side. Congratulations.

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It has gotten loads better since then, but even if you are constantly learning and improving as a company unanticipated things can still happen.
Also I’m sure FP currently gets loads of requests they can’t solve from angry FP1 customers, which slows them down.

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I think a part of the solution of the problem would be honesty -

when my display stopped working, I contacted them and got something I´d identify as standard message that did not at all fit for my problem (and ignored anything I wrote in my ticket. Problem: Display stays black. They asked me to install certain tools. HOW?). They could have said they are busy …

Weeks later I answered this, I got the next standard message (which asked all those things again), again ignoring everything I said. They could have said they are busy again instead of pretending to help by sending random messages.

Finally I called them. I was told “this difficult problem” (displas stays black… well, how difficult) will be solved by an “more technical oriented colleague” that will contact me later that day. Nobody called me. I called again two days later, I was told that there just are no spare display modules, so that “technical colleague” was just a lame excuse to play for time. My phone was defective for a month now.

Serveral days, serveral times calling them and serveral times “we will call you today, personally, we garantee it” later (without, of cours, nobody calling me back) I finally demanded repair or refund within two weeks. Suddenly, they reacted and I could send my phone in for repair. They took exactly those two weeks. Unfortunately DHL Express even managed to lose my phone, so I had to contact Fairphone again. Same game again “we will contact you” … Today, alsmost 2 months after my phone stopped working, I finally got that refund.

As it was already the 4th repair problem since I got my phone (with a total of over 4 months of not being able to use that phone fully or at all, they even managed to damage my phone at repair center and tried to blame me for it) I did not want a replacement phone. So basically:

The idea of the phone is still nice and of course there can be problems for a small young company to develop a phone, but as long as I get taken for a fool as customer, get lied to, get promisses they do not hold and even get blamed for own faults, Fairphone is just not fair to its customers.

They should really sort out this.

Sorry for the long post (driven by accumulated frustration), I liked this cummunity. Good bye and I wish you all more luck than I had.

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Surprisingly, I had a response within a day of making this post:wink:
Because of holidays, I haven’t been able to do a hard reset as they asked for until recently. This did not solve the problem.
I have now updated the ticket.
I hope that posting here will encourage another response from support:slight_smile:

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Similar experience.
My initial request is from August 1st.
Send 6 messages, received 2.
Phone still unusable and waiting to be send back.
This is the slowest customer support I have every experienced.

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Glad we finally reacted to your request, @rod.
Let me explain how requests are processed. Every request is treated as a possible in-warranty issue. In order to prevent unnecessary time without phone, we do want to rule out other possibilities that we have no control over like third party issues (corroded SIM, corrupt downloaded app). The customer can do this via checking if the SIM card is older than a year, try Safe mode and as a last resort, return to Factory settings.

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I completely agree with @bfb!
Honesty could calm down a lot of their customers. They could simply show a bit sympathy for their customers and admit that not everything works fine. It’s just annoying to hear lame excuses from the support or to get standard messages after weeks of waiting which do not help you in any way. This is just frustrating for me as a customer as it costs me a lot of time, repeating the same questions over and over again. I guess it is also not really efficient for the support. In that way they have to look at every problem multiple times instead of simply look at it once, take a bit more time but be able to close it afterwards.
I just don’t think that I am taken serious, as it seems that half of the time they do not even read the messages you send them and simply try to calm you down with some templates.

I want to share with you my story and I am sorry, it got a bit long…
4 months ago my screen stopped working on the left side. After having tried all the work-arounds suggested on the forum, I contacted the support telling them that took the phone apart and cleaned everything but the problem consisted. I got an answer relatively quick, telling me that I should take the phone apart and clean everything…. So I told them again that I already did that. One week later I got the answer that in that case they will send me a new screen, but unfortunately at the moment they are out of stock. After asking them when they expected the new screens, I was told that I might have to wait several weeks.
2 months later (!) I had still not heard back from them, so I wrote them a long mail telling them that I was really frustrated that it is not the first time they keep me waiting without informing me about what’s going on.
One day after that I got a standard mail that the screens are back in stock and that I could send in my screen so that they can check whether it’s a warranty case. I did get no personal reaction at all to my mail which to be honest disappointed me a lot. Just a “We understand you”, would have been enough.
I was told that I have to fill in a request on their return portal, and they promised to approve my request within 72 hours. So I filled in my request immediately and of course - who did expect differently - after 1 week I was told that unfortunately they have some problems with their return portal and that I’ll have to wait just a bit longer. After that again silence for 2 weeks, so I wrote them again.
Another week later I was informed that I had to fill in the request again, which I did and that time it actually worked and was approved quickly. I got a confirmation mail telling me that I have to choose a pick up time for the DHL currier. However the return portal refused to let me do that. So I wrote them again asking what I was doing wrong. One week later I got another mail, telling me that they approved my request and I got another request confirmation mail, telling me again that I have to choose a pickup time. But of course I could still not do that so I wrote them again. That was on Wednesday and so far I have not heard back from them.

Long story short, my screen broke down in May, it’s a frequently reported issue and it should be replaced under warranty. Since then 4 months passed, I had contact with 4 different support agents, 15 mails have been sent back and forth and we are still not even a tiny bit closer to a solution. This is simply inacceptable for a company that advertises the easy replacement of broken things.

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I really feel for you and you are absolutely correct, that it’s unacceptable.
Have you ever contacted them by phone? That is - according to what can be read in this forum - more effective.

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Sounds like a very very very similar situation as I had/have.

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I did today and you were right, that indeed was much more effective…
It turned out that there are still some problems with the return portal and that people from Switzerland are not able to arrange a pick up time. I still do not quite understand why they do not mention that anywhere and just let people try anyway…
But nevertheless I could contact DHL directly and they’re going to pick up my parcel tomorrow. Now I just hope that there won’t be any troubles in the return center and that they still have some spare screens…

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I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

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What’s going on with the customer support? Two weeks ago and a reminder after my message to the helpdesk still no reply. My phone has the same defect as 3 months ago. I’m a big fan of Fairphone because of its strong ethical statement and try to be a good ambassador. But I’m starting to be disappointed in the quality and the customer service. Am I the only one?

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Give them a call.

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It is outrageous that Fairphone are devoting resources to new products like the camera upgrade module when it is clear that they cannot support existing customers who have problems within the warranty period.

I have initiated the purchase of at least six Fairphones over the years but now I am going to ask Ethical Consumer magazine to consider withdrawing its Best Buy award because of Fairphone’s unethical business practices towards its customers.

The problem with lack of support has been around since FP1. Excuses are simply unacceptable. Fairphone should put the resources towards offering the service they promised before selling any new products.

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Thanks to you all for sharing your experiences. I was thinking of buying a Fairphone, but I won’t now.

To be fair to Fairphone, I’ve read through the “Our goals” and “How we work” sections of the website, and neither of them mention customers at all. I don’t get the impression that customer satisfaction is high on their list of priorities; customers seem more like a means to an end, albeit a laudable one.

So I’ll buy my next phone from a different, less-ethical organisation because, as a customer, customer service is pretty important to me.

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