Hi BertG
I think you are actually pointing at the heart of the problem. That I would take from 2 different angles.
First, the status and duality of “The Community”. Fairphone and many other companies do emphasis about the Community, about all of the consumers being together on an adventure with them (I am pushing it a bit here, just for the example). The aim for the company putting forward the Community, is to promote the company, create a affect with the potential future consumer, so that she/he chooses that product over a concurrent.
Here is Fairphone communication material : Community - Fairphone
It says in the introduction :
"
Fairphone is on a journey to change the electronics industry, and the key superpower is our amazing community of supporters and advocates. We want to shine a light on the local Fairphone pioneers, change-makers and innovators that are shaping the future of the industry with us.
" (I realize now that I wasn’t exaggerating…)
There is nothing wrong with that message in itself, and I did buy a Fairphone because I got convinced that they are doing a better business than others. I did provide them with test results because I wanted to help the Community, therefore myself too. Never the less, the Community is suddenly ignored when it is about calculating how much money they can offer me for a non working phone. They indeed decide to use the starting point of my problem from the moment they opened a ticket for support, and they ignored the moment I opened a topic on the forum. And this despite the relative popularity of that topic, which could be seen as a measure of its usefullness. I have mentioned that to the support numerous time via emails. And never they have mentioned it in their reply, they simply ignored it.
Second, you said that dishonest support would “implies ill will on their side.”.
I do not agree with you about the use of that concept, because the definition of “ill will” is not suited for the current case and subject to interpretations. An hypothetical company may decide to provide dishonest support to customers because they can not afford better, because they protect their business and employees. In this case, it is hard to classify their behavior as “ill will”. The point here is not to try understand their deepest motivations nor to qualify it as “ill will”, but to look at the consumer law and the consumer rights. We all seam to agree here that 5 months, which is actually 16 months considering the topic creation, is way too much. But this is not the only point of the current topic. I accuse them of having an internal policy to delay reimbursement and exchange of faulty phone. I base my accusations on :
_ the many people complaining for now 16 months about the bad support, which can mostly be resumed by : no answer from the company. Just read No sound 50+% of the time in calls, until reboot for details.
_ that post, where a user claims he got his phone changed after pushing them, which solved his problem : No sound 50+% of the time in calls, until reboot - #131 by freierfunden
_ one of the last email I received that says : “I can ask for approval to swap your device with a new one […] This is a solution we have already tried in the last quarter of 2020. After testing a big number of devices we have stopped doing it because it didn’t solve the issue for our customers.” Despite my explanations about my problem not being related to what they describe in their blog, which is also pointed out by that post : No sound 50+% of the time in calls, until reboot - #166 by mcompte Which I agree with
That is why I qualify the Fairphone support as dishonest.
I think that all-in-all your comment is very much related to the one from existentionaut. We all came to Fairphone for a reason. I am actually very disappointed, and I would like to find another explanation. But re-reading the topic (“No sound 50%…”) and the last emails I received the last 2 weeks from the support, I had to admit that there is a pattern in their support, which I qualify as dishonest.
It is very hard to judge, and I actually do no want to judge them as a whole. I simply want my consumer rights to be respected.
Bastien