Dont confuse repair with warranty claims. You are always free to order and repair on your own, however as for all things especially under warranty you have to use dedicated shops. You would not mind to bring your car to a service center I guess or wait for a dedicated service employee to repair your washing maschine.
Dont confuse repair with warranty claims.
Of course, I donāt. I donāt care about a warranty claim, I want a phone I can repair myself. Without the firehose programmer and clear instructions, I obviously canāt.
~30ā¬ is fine for a repair knowing that the phone cost around 600-700ā¬, if anything is āreallyā broken and Iām not even talking about the ecological impact of sending a mostly new phone back and forth to some corner of Europe like that.
Itās easy to say I can send my phone to a third-party company, but itās primarily because we, as users, arenāt given clear instructions on how to repair our phone that we have to go through this process.
I have nothing against outsourcing, but I donāt think the contact details of this āofficialā repair center are clearly indicated either. Besides, why would they have the firehose programmers to unbrick my phone when Fairphone isnāt supposed to distribute them?
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Small Update from me after a log waiting period with a submitted ticket:
The Chatbot asks you if you already have a ticket submitted. If you say yes, he will just update it and tell you to continue to wait. If you say no, you may be forwarded to an actual human. That finally did it for me. I sent the person from support the reference to my ticket and i finally (after more than 7 weeks without any response from the support) was able to send in my phone.
It is currently being repaired at their service center. I really hope this was it for me.
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Iām genuinely happy for you, but it infuriates me on so many levels.
Obviously, itās best to lie to Fairphone.
This is extremely infuriating. Iām recommending everyone I know to skip the fairphone with support as it is. I hope some big tech youtuber picks this topic up. Buying a fairphone currently can NOT be recommended.
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I am one of the 25 (and counting, here: FP5 not booting after update to Android 15 - #62 by OldRoutard) FP5 users affected by a dead fingerprint sensor and an update to Android 15 issue, with no answer from the support for weeks or months.
I must admit that if it werenāt a fairphone but a reputable brand like Samsung, Apple, or Sony, I would probably have been less patient and much less understanding after several weeks without a response from support, without a direct point of contact, without an identified repair center, even if it meant planning a trip to Paris. I think the same frustration, mixed with a sense of solidarity, must be felt by some of the people affected by the same issue, and the support team cannot rely indefinitely on the goodwill and understanding of its customers. I hope the matter is being taken seriously internally because if it is a malfunction affecting a significant portion of FP5 users, negative publicity could have serious consequences for the brand.
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Oh yeah, that one hit me too. If you try updating to Android 15 with a broken fingerprint sensor, it WILL brick your phone. I was lucky I could return to android 14 with the battery removal trick.
there is no battery removal trickā¦ you have to reboot at least 7 times which will cause (normally) a fallback to the other slot. So just to clarify that removing the battery should not be needed as you can force a reboot by just holding the power button several seconds and that 1 reboot (however you force it) is not sufficient. This is not to discuss the issues itself here and just for clarification to others reading here. The topic around the actual issue is here
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I am unable to reach support too. I switched completely to fairphone from iphone. I have been using Iphone for over 16 years now. I still have one as company phone. My family all use iphone too. I made some sacrifices and lowered some expectations to switch to Fairphone. For me Iphone was expensive to replace screen, battery, etc. I got a fairbud XL and fairbuds too along with my Fairphone 5. I like it so far. My fairbud XL does not work on Debian Linux OS out of the box. I made it work by making some configuration changes. It again stopped working after a recent Linux update. I can fix it again. Not a big deal. I will accept this inconvenience. Then the Fairbuds XL Headband Base broke. Took it to a repair shop near by and I was told the plastic is cheap. I told them its recycled not cheap. Then I learned all recycled plastic are not as durable as new plastic. Ok I will lower my expectations again. My fairbud FX was replaced for free. Fairphone has 5 year warranty but fairbuds has only 2 year, I think.
- Does anyone know what is the technical reason for only 2 year warranty ? The surface area of fairbud xl is more than fairphone. We could save more reuse more, i assume. And I hope there is no qualcom long term support requests dependencies, etc. Again, i assume. I am missing something here. Please suggest..
Within 1 year my Fairbuds XL Headband Base broke again. Now I am starting to think it may not be cheap recycled plastic, is it the way I use it ? I do not use it much though, i already have a Bose headset for most of my needs - Bose does not come in green 
. I only use my Fairbud XL headsets when I am working far away from my connected laptop, always once a week for around 1 hr when i am cleaning and listening in on a work call. That is the only time I use it. Lack of use should not break my headsets. Bose does not provide coverage to my kitchen area, but Fairbud XL with its larger mm driver does, i think. Fairbuds XL works far away from my laptop than Bose. I like that about Fairbuds XL, its heavy and uncomfortable, I am ok with that inconvenience.
- why is support not responding Its has been over a week now waiting for a response? I am ok with this too. I am just curious if support is able to get my messages. I hope everything is ok on their side. I wanted to get PinePhone, i got Fairphone because I could not get PinePhone. I am starting to think my battery is small and too many background apps running on Fairphone. Once I get my new company phone, I will remove Android and install Ubuntu touch on Fairphone and see if it is worth while. My expectations are much lower now - all the things I do for sustainability.
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You should have received an auto response with ticket number!?
They are just understaffed for the implemented processes and amount of questions/issue reports
I got ticket number immediately.
I really understand that Fairphone is lacking human resources in the customer support area but what I have been experiencing in the past months is beyond any understanding.
Last summer I had bought an USB-C to USB-C cable āmade to lastā while ordering also a screen protector to save on the shipping. I had been using an old charger and cable from my previous phone though. The cable was quite old but I decided to keep using it until it would stop working completely and just then I would switch to the new one from Fairphone. In December, while ordering some other Fairphone products I have got also a charger. As far as I remember, I have started using the new charger and cable together around January.
In April I have noticed the cable did not always work properly. Sometimes I have kept the phone plugged for a few hours and the battery level would rise from e.g. 20 to just 50%. Sometimes I have connected the phone to the PC and while transferring files the connection would crash. At some point I have even changed the battery because the old one had stopped charging at all. But the cable would not work any better. On May 11th I have opened the first customer support e-mail ticket because the chat was not available at all. I have got no reply.
On June 1st and 17th I have opened new tickets, no reply again.
In the meantime I went on holiday abroad for almost whole summer.
On July 7th I managed to chat with a customer support agent who wrote me I would get a replacement cable in my parentsā home in Poland as I have asked, because I will be back in Italy just at the end of August. Again, nothing happened afterwards.
Two weeks ago I also changed the USB port and the cable kept working bad.
I used the chat again last Wednesday and the other agent solved the issue. I gave him again the address in Poland. The cable has been sent on Friday and it arrived today at noon. When I got the e-mail I was surprised I did not hear the door bell ring. I opened the UPS delivery details and found out the cable has been sent to Italy. Even though I asked twice to send it to Poland where I am spending almost whole summerā¦ I wrote them I have no other cable with me so I am struggling to charge my phone and cannot transfer the files on my PC at all any more. I wrote them I do not want to spend money on products made by less sustainable companies but now Fairphone forces me to do it because I need to keep using my phone for the upcoming month before I come backā¦
The package arrived at noon so nobody worked at the chat anymore and this is why I decided to wite this post.
I am really very disappointed. When I had bought my Fairphone at the end of 2022 and got some problems with an accessory a month later, it needed to be replaced twice in 3 months but everything has been solved smoothly. Now I am experiencing really the worst customer support ever!
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Iāve tried waiting in livechat for 2 hours, no agents available
Iāll try again later 
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