Genuinely shocked by shipping and customer service

Discuss The Industry
1

Hi all! I’m creating this post out of frustration, and also to try to understand if my experience is the same as the others or if I simply was very unlucky.

I ordered a FP6 on Saturday because my current smartphone has almost reached the “unusable” state (mic dead, usb-c almost dead). I was quite happy to see a 2 to 5 days delivery, as I thought I could stretch out a few days of use of my current smartphone until the delivery of the FP6. However this morning 5 days have passed, I have not received a single feedback from FP since I placed the order, and the order itself is still in the “processing” state. I wrote to customer support to know if they could at least provide an estimate for the shipping, and received no answer.

It’s not like I cannot wait, but I think that as a buyer I deserve to know when they plan to ship their products, so I could at least find a temporary solution if the shipment takes longer than expected and my phone dies meanwhile. Am I asking too much from a company that literally brands itself as “fair” and for something I paid almost 600 euros? What I’m seeing is honestly a HUGE red flag.

2

Do you have confirmation that your payment has been received?

3

Well, “fair” mainly means that materials are sourced fairly and that workers are treated well.
In my experience, what still works is shipment, although it might be a little slower than in other online shops. That is the last interaction with Fairphone that works well. You tried to get in touch with their customer support, but unfortunately “Replies are currently delayed due to high volume.”, which seems to be the case for ages already. I’m currently waiting for a week for a reply to a support ticket about a lost volume button of the FP6 protective case, so nothing crazy.
In general I have few issues with their products. If I needed the support more often I wouldn’t have bought a second, third or fourth Fairphone in our household.
I keep my fingers crossed for a quick delivery for you and hopefully you’ll be okay without the support then.

4

To say it mildly, your expectations on how fast things should go, do not match FP reality. No reponse from support is no surprise at all, they even have a banner on their homepage that they are overwhelmed, searching the forum you will also see that this is not new. For shipping I would not count Saturday (depending on order time) or Sunday… If you need things fast, in my eyes FP is not the way to go. And I dont blame you, its just to put thing realistically.

5

I remember a Reddit user from the UK anxious about their purchase a few days before leaving the country. To my surprise, the shipment was very fast.

I agree with @Martin_Anderseck that shipment is what works. Asking the support for feedback not that much, though please try the live chat option (10-12 CEST).

I know it’s only anecdotal experience but all my purchases were shipped in hardly no time.

My suggestions:

  • check your spam folder for purchase confirmation. On my last purchase I received two emails on the same day, from noreply@tmail.fairphone.com
  • double check whether the payment went through
  • double check your order in your account section, perhaps the tracking number has been added. Please see that in my case (below) the order is still mistakenly labelled as preparation while it had been successfully delivered two months ago. I heard about a user who never got the tracking email while their item had been kept at the delivery spot
  • reach CS tomorrow or even tonight ask TIN to check your purchase number

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Good luck

6

Thank you all for your feedbacks!
I have received both the payment and the order confirmation emails. After those, a couple of marketing emails because I subscribed the newsletter but nothing related to my order (and sadly nothing in the spam folder).
I should also add that since day 0 there’s what seems to be a tracking link in my order tracking page, but it always brings me to a 500 error page.
Thanks also for understanding that I’m not just whining for the new toy: having paid twice as much I ever spent on a smarpthone I’m just worried for not having received at least a “sorry your order is late for wathever reason”. Actually, since I was in emergency mode with my old phone, I chose a color (green) which showed 2-5 days for delivery as opposed to 2-3 weeks for the others, hence I was expecting the whole process to be pretty quick, but now the green one shows 2-3 weeks :'). On top of that, I selected a pickup point for the delivery so I cannot just go there every day hoping that it got delivered…
Finally, everyone makes mistakes and I have no problem with that, but the fact that communicating with customer support is so hard makes everything quite frustrating! Sorry for the long post, I’ll just keep my fingers crossed for now!

7

Hi
thanks for providing more light. It seems obvious your purchase has been acknowledged and processed. I hope your order was still within a FP6 batch available in stock.

My advise to contact Tin and/or human agents tomorrow via chat still stands.
I double checked my order history - there was one item it took longer to ship and I considered cancelling the purchase. I contacted the CS over the chat and got the information that it might be too late to cancel shipment.

I have contacted our warehouse as usually orders ship within hours. This is to find out if we can cancel your order as it already entered their system.

On a final note, I would try copying and pasting your tracking number to some general tracking sites to see the status. I used that for example - https://t.17track.net

8

I don’t think I’ve ever had a good experience with UPS. Ever. I’ve complained before about the time I told UPS not to deliver when I got a shipping notification because I was out of the country for a few more days, and they left my brand new Fairphone 4 at my doorstep the next day anyway. Or how they don’t even attempt home delivery and just dropped stuff off at a parcel point despite paying £5 more for home delivery. Or… well, the list goes on. Got this one to add - which I’m pretty sure is UPS’ fault again given they handle consignment as well as shipping:
Somewhere last week I ordered a new battery for my phone. Somewhat to my surprise I received not one but two tracking codes. Even more to my surprise I also actually got two parcels delivered today: one for me, and one with the box addressed to me but with the invoice listing a completely different consignee. In other words, I have someone elses order sitting on my table.
In a normal world I’d give Fairphone a call, have them send me a paid return label or a label for redirecting the parcel to the correct person, drop it off and have it be a 10 minute ordeal. I guess for now a ticket in their system and endless patience will just have to do. Feel sorry for whoever is waiting for this parcel.
The moral of this story: shipping has been absolutely awful for years, it’s mostly UPS’ fault, and Fairphone should make an effort to fix it or switch to a shipping and consignment company that’s not the absolute worst shipping company ever.

9

Never use UPS if you can avoid them.

Last year they had the unpardonable nerve to deliver, late, an empty envelope that had been ripped open.

I can’t think of worse.

10

I never had any issues with UPS so either way it is, as with all other companies, anecdotal evidence and heading a bit off topic.

11

anecdotal evidence and heading a bit off topic.

The topic title and first paragraph very much reads like a request for anecdotal evidence, so as long as the anecdotes are about Fairphone shipping I have to disagree with your conclusion that it’s off-topic.

12

It’s almost fascinating how inconsistent these carriers are, all depending on where you live. UPS is infamous in so many places, but I’ve never had a bad experience with them (when receiving, that is - don’t think I ever sent anything). On the other hand, if some vendor decides to ship something with those godforsaken hacks at DPD, it’s basically a 50/50 chance between the parcel collecting dust at the final delivery warehouse before getting returned to sender without further notice or the parcel getting tossed in some corner of the building I work at, where I or someone who knows me will hopefully eventually find it. I’m not sure that I’ve ever interacted with a DPD delivery worker directly, lol.

13

When I needed a new phone in January, I decided to get a Fairphone 5. I then checked availability at local sellers. ( Cologne, Germany) I got it from Vodafone and just picked it up next day.

14

Shock is the right reaction. I haven’t had issues with shipping times for phones or spare parts, but customer service has been essentially non-existent (which seems to be the norm from the comments you’ll see). My wife put in a request a year ago and never received a reply. I raised a major issue in autumn last year (the same issue that many FP4 users were raising) and didn’t receive a reply until well into this year, by which time I’d long since given up and bought a Google Pixel instead as my phone had become unusable. The mass-messages posted on the forum (because so many people had the same issue) were nothing more than a sporadic “we’re very busy but we are looking into it” boiler plate nonsense with no time frames or indications of the serious widespread issues being a major priority.

Some of the issues were reduced (not fixed) through updates this year, but I now just use my Fairphone as a work phone during business hours since I rarely need it for more than calls and Slack.

Based on my experience and what I’ve read here and on Reddit, they need a major reworking of their customer support and dev responsiveness. It’s sad, because I really, really wanted this to work out and was willing to get fewer features & less out of the user experience in exchange for better business practices, but it was so bad that my phone was a dumb phone for many months with total radio silence from the company. If I wanted a dumb phone I’d just get a dumb phone.

15

Well, I must agree that UPS seem to be sh*te. I had to wait for my FP6 to be dispatched as I wanted Forest Green (Irony vs. someone choosing it as readily available.) But once dispatched it’s been showing for last 3 days as delayed, Only when logged on to UPS website it said was held at ‘export gateway’ (for 3 days so far with 2-5 days delivery timescales).

I can only strongly suggest for Fairphone to consider using DPD or DHL maybe as UPS are also very funny with delivery rules in regards to leaving at your neighbours etc. (at least in U.K.).

I can only hope FP6 arrives rather sooner than later and I hardly ever or never (fingers crossed) need Fairphone Customer Service’s assistance :slight_smile:

I hate google and other big tech corporations with their arrogance, so a slow Customer Service may be a fair trade off (pun intended)… :smiley:

16

…Just found out from tracking that my new FP6 is being returned to the sender! Has not even left Holland. Either UPS messed up or Fairphone couldn’t attach correct paperwork? Whichever way, not really a good experience! I wonder how long it’s going to take for their Customer Service to sort that out :roll_eyes: (so it will be later rather than sooner for my handset to arrive anyway…)

P.S. I am afraid, I am starting to be genuinely shocked by shipping and customer service, as per this thread title :roll_eyes:

17

You must not have used them?

18

As per my previous posts here, my journey with Fairphone gets into ‘shambles’ category. The phone I had paid for went back to Fairphone thanks to the UPS, for the reason unknown to me,

The Fairphone Customer Service only confirmed they have received it but kept mum about what’s happened. Asked to confirm address which was exactly as per invoice and nothing since.

Trying to speak 10-12 / 14-16 does not help anymore than emailing, as they do not want to ‘overlap’ and will fob you off the end of my conversation with the agent was a bit abrupt if not rude… she said: ‘if you have no more questions I will close this conversation’ and just did, not even waiting to see if I respond at all! They might be busy but it was a tad arrogant IMO.

No confirmation about the phone re-sent to me… annoying.

I would like to say that now things can only get better, but I will not hold my breath.

What a start to a journey with Fairphone…

P.S. Just realised, they asked for a ‘new’(sic!) address, like my one and only address I have was not good enough! It sounds unbelievable but they sit on my 540 quid and take the proverbial!

Last update: I cancelled my order through chat as no response to my emails. I had a confirmation so there is a chance it works.

It makes me happy I can leave Fairphone company with their terrible carrier (UPS) and customer service far from perfect behind. I thought of buying the FP6 through Murena website but if anything goes wrong with the handset I’d be back to square one dealing with useless Fairphone…

I will have to get some other phone with Custom OS, will be leaving this forum soon. Nothing personal…

19

Honestly, my recent experience with Fairphone pushed me from “annoyed” straight into “I’m done”.

I’ve already had issues with previous orders in the past – usually some mix of UPS problems and Fairphone support that either didn’t react at all or reacted in a completely wrong, unhelpful way.

This time was the tipping point.
UPS refused to deliver a spare display because of a supposedly “incomplete” address, even though it’s a perfectly valid single-family house address without a door number.

Fairphone support knew about the issue, but in practice they were neither willing nor able to solve a very simple problem with their shipping partner.

Communication was slow, generic and largely ineffective, while the shipment got stuck and eventually went back.

For me this isn’t “bad luck with one order”, it fits a pattern:

  • outdated and frankly terrible update policy from Fairphone/Murena,
  • their public stance and shots against GrapheneOS instead of fixing their own security and update gaps,
  • and on top of that, utterly unreliable logistics and support that leaves the customer sitting in the middle.

And as a small but very telling detail: even their web ecosystem feels like a mess.

  • Separate logins for the shop, the support portal and the forum,
  • no single sign-on across any of them,
  • three different user accounts to manage just to be a customer and get help.

For a company that markets itself as modern, fair and user-friendly, this is just amateur hour.

That’s why I decided to walk away from Fairphone entirely and move to Shiftphone instead. The spare display was only meant to keep my Fairphone 4 as a backup device – but since Fairphone/UPS still didn’t manage to get that display delivered, I ended up throwing the FP4 away and writing it off.

At this point I don’t buy the “sustainability” narrative anymore. From my personal experience, it feels like marketing first and reality later – if at all.

Between the logistics chaos, the customer support and the update situation, this was my last Fairphone.

20

A few posts further up, you suggested DPD as an alternative carrier, which would seem like an outrageous and almost offensive idea if you lived where I live.

So yes, it is completely plausible for someone to have never had a bad experience with UPS despite the fact that in your case, they’ve apparently shat the bed with remarkable consistency. For worse or for worst, that’s just how it works.