Fairphone really has to sort out its warranty support

Discuss The Industry
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21

Ok, I don’t think, that this really represents my experience with FP.
I give it, that the support team seems to be drowning in work, taken sometimes ages to react with a helpful response. The communications skills leave much to be desired; according to the reports given by customers in this forum.
On the other hand I am not sure, to what extent that is representative or mirroring even just what the majority of users did experience.
Whatever brand you will browse the internet for, you will find lots and lots of ill treated and extremly unsatisfied customers complaining about the company. If you go by them or that kind of reaction in general, you will never again buy anything.
I at least can not confirm the bad behaviour of Fairphone support.
First of all, the two broken back covers (a design flaw of the first - regular - covers) were addressed and solved immediately.
In addidition they support this forum and the user community by e.g. phones for developers, support for the Angels-program etc. That at least is not usual for companies.
Finally, one should always keep in mind, that the reports in a forum like this one are always only one side of the story. Sometimes it’s just small and unvoluntary “mistakes” on the user side, that are causing problems, like using a wrong mail address, opening new tickets for a support request instead of using the already given identity code etc.

I don’t mean to imply of course, that those user/customer reports are fake or exaggerating or that FP is always great and their support flawless. Just keep in mind, that the forum has about 10,000 users, equaling a maximum of 10% of the more than 100,000 buyers. Not all of the users are here for not being satisfied with their phone or the support, while not all unsatisfied people are users here. I have no idea of course about the customer satisfaction with FP in general, but the maybe 5% “angry” customers in this forum are a distortet picture of the reality out there.

Edit:

Maybe that’s because they happen to look at their customers as a “Community” which is maybe a slightly different concept, but mentioned quite a lot on their homepage.
This stance might need reconsideration, as (especially future) customers don’t know or care about this concept, when buying the phone in an online shop or in their city at a mobilcom debitel shop.

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22

Waiting 3,5 weeks for the support to answer me. My cover is desintegrating and I’m afraid it will break even in my poket.
Pretty surprised, there are still people wanting to buy a fp.

23

I’m jumping on this topic. I went for a long time and lived with the support. But at the moment it’s ridiculous.

I have a screen issue with a replacement FP2 after I had my fair share of trouble with one of the first batch supporter FP2s.

I opened a ticket in the end of July/start of August and i got a reply in the end of September. (After 4!! weeks)

And all I got even though, perfectly describing the problem, and knowing that I have had this same issue before I get a copy-paste answer telling me to do what I had done before already.
Being a kind nature that I am. I made sure that I really had done everything and double checked every move.

I promptly replied to the copy-paste, and have now been waiting for 2+ weeks for the support to answer my reply. I am not really angry, but I feel a little left out and let down by fairphone.

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24

As far as I know, they are increasing their support staff. Such support handling you describe is obviously ridiculous. I can only imagine they are relaying on external services at the moment.
The situation should improve in November, until then, what works best is calling them!

25

Well… The situation has not gotten better.

And counting. And this is the 3rd contact on the same ticket. And all because some screen burn in, which obviously is some hardware quality problem.

The ticket was opened on 01.09.2017! Wait times of 2-4 weeks for a reply. It’s seriously the worst.

26

I have my first and only warranty support ticket, open ever since and unreplied as of october 17th 2017, not heard back anything at all. The classical black cover of my fp2 is coming apart, the rubbery edge is peeling off from the harder rest of the case :frowning:

27

There must be an error, because these issues are usually solved very fast. Unless - as your replacement - you want a blue slim case, which is currently not available - but even then you should have gotten a message. So give them a call.

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28

Well I have only submitted my repair/warranty requestion or actually asked about proceedings or if I was eligible for anything, and attached detailed description and photographs of the borked component. Thats all. All there is is the submitted support ticket. Nothing ever happend to it since my original submission. :frowning: I didnt demand anything or wasnt sure about if or what would happen. Later on I found in the forum that this type of issue with the rubbery edge peeling off of the rest of the cover was actually fairly common with other folks on the forum here as well, but never dived into this subject too far as to be able to say or know the exact further proceedings or what would happen next or if i was to select anything for replacement from the online shop or whatever. I was simply waiting. Or I am still. I have made my move, but the cover is continuing to fall apart further. Wonder what timespan the initial response from them will be. Its too many days already if you ask for my personal opinion. Wellp… :frowning:

29

Does anyone here have a good experience with the Fairphone service?

In October I bought a new camera module for my FP2, hoping to improve the awkward quality of the original one. I was taught wrong. The new one has a big blurry area on the right side of every picture. I wrote a message to service on October the 25th and attached an example picture, nothing happened. I asked again on November 15th and surprisingly there was an answer five days later. I send the requested pictures the same day, nothing happened. I asked again by mail two weeks later, nothing happened. I sent an email a week later, and guess what happened? You’re right, nothing.

So it is now seven weeks after my first contact to the service and I still can’t take any reasonable picture. This is by far the worst experience with a service department I ever had. I just can laugh about the figures published her sometimes, how fast the service is reacting.

BTW my credentials in the Fairphone shop I used for buying my FP1 didn’t work for buying the FP2. These are not working for logging in to the service area. I tried several times to reset my credentials or create a new account, nothing worked. So maybe there is an answer, but I can’t see it.

And I’m not going to call, because when the service is working, I’m working too (in a software and service department!), to be able to afford this wonderful piece of fair smartphone and my employer won’t be happy if I would call to the Netherlands during my working time.

So at the moment I’m really upset, having a FP1 I can use as a paperweight after being promised to have a phone that works longer than any other on this planet, a quite expensive mediocre FP2, that seems to go the same road, staying on Android 6 while Android 8 is already out and not able to take a picture which is as good as from a 133€ Moto G5 with Android 7 I had to buy as a backup.

I know this is only a community forum, but it is hosted on the same page the seller of this ‘fair’ smartphone uses and as I’m not able to contact the service department in any way, I hope that at least sometimes one of the employees of Fairphone looks into the threads here and I will receive an answer.

3 Likes
30

This should not be the case.
Every message in the support area should reach you by mail as well.
When I had to contact support (twice for broken “old” back cover) I was’nt able to log into the support area as well, but got every information by mail.
And as you already received a mail, this channel should work.

I understand that, but it’s up to you. And there are lots of businesses out there, that offer nothing but the phone-channel for support.

You really got no pause? I’d call that slavery. :wink:
Seriously: I feel with you and understand your anger and annoyance. Problem is, they are a small business, strugglling on all fronts:

  • developing the next phone
  • enhancing the FP2
  • updating software
  • producing new FP2 as well as spare parts
  • handling support
  • doing PR
    …
    They just seem to be drowning, especially during the festive season I guess.
    My guess would be, that they lack the funds to employ enough personnel for handling all the tasks.
    I absolutely keep my fingers crossed for you.
    And you really should try to find a way for calling them (have your ticketnumber at hand). It might be good for your nerves and inner peace as well.
31

I agree with almost every point of your statement, but:

Due to limitations of the built-in SoC, Android 8 (Oreo) most certainly cannot be applied to the Fairphone 2. This is true as well for a lot of other smartphone devices.

32

Thank you BertG for your answer. Don’t worry, there is nothing wrong with my inner peace, I’m fine :slight_smile:. It just helped to write down what bothered me since I found out about the problem with the camera.

[quote=“BertG, post:30, topic:31924”]
You really got no pause? I’d call that slavery. :wink:[/quote]
No slavery, my lunch break is 30 minutes, but I need the time to get some food and relax :wink:.
If there is no progress until the end of next week, I might give it a try, although I think, if there is a support channel via email, it should be working.

1 Like
33

I thought Nougat ain’t no option already, because of hardware limitations?

34

Hey @Incanus, the forum here is actually a great help to solve problems you have. So maybe you could read a few topics about related issues with the new camera:

there are really some helpful comments by awesome community members, and it is worth digging a bit in this forum, usually the problems are already described and -partly- answered
Cheers!

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35

Thanks for your help Francois, but the forum can’t help with a hardware issue. The pictures aren’t to dark or the flash is not working, but the fotos are ok on the left side and not sharp in any way but blurry on the right side. I reseated the camera already as been asked for, made sure the lens is clear and so on.
I’m reading in this forum since I bought my FP1, but nothing related to my problem.
To illustrate it, look at the four linesmen, they were standing still, the two on the left side are quite crisp, the two on the right blurry.

IMG_20171024_203210.jpg1024×454 141 KB

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36

Yes, I had several good experiences last year. My questions where handled quickly and correctly, delivery was quick to.

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37

So on Nov 18, couple of days ago I wrote the Support, because my backcover and my bottom module were broken (for the 3rd time). Here is my E-Mail:

##This is what I got as a reply:

I can fully understand that support is behind the requests and therefore has to aswer requests quickly, but THIS IS SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE.
I did anything possible to speed up the proces and to not get this kind of response. I sent my IMEI, my order number, I told them that I already tried multiple chargers, I even told them that I was an Angel, because I thought that this may lead to a custom response, but no, everything I got was an automatic piece of pre-written sentences.
I don’t know what to do now, because I don’t have the patience to answer politely.

My phone works atm, because @paulakreuzer borrowed me a bottom module from Austian Fairphoners stock until my new one arrives, but you definitely have to do something about this. Maybe @douwe can forward this so I finally can get my module and my cover, because I cannot (see paragraph above).

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38

Except you do know the actual way to speed things up and avoid having to go back and forth right?

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39

I don’t want to call them, because
1st I don’t like calling people I don’t know
2nd Calling them must not be the solution to people having problems with their phones.
3rd This is simply unfair to those users who don’t know about this or can’t speak english

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40

No because the faster your request is handled the faster the support team can go on to the next request, so calling them helps reduce the backlog.

1 Like