Hi everyone,
Unfortunately my faith in Fairphone is being tested a lot at the moment 
My wife’s FP4 has a broken USB-C connector, the port’s solder pads have broken off from the part which has the connector to the bottom module. To get the phone to charge at all (never mind rapid) she has to wedge something under the cable to get it to put enough pressure into the port to get the contacts to make. We’ve done everything that Fairphone support have asked us to do (even though we know what’s wrong) and now we just get silence, no replies to her emails at all. It’s been over three months now since she first reported the fault, all they have to do is send a new USB-C port and we can replace it. Why can’t they just do that?! 
Any ideas? (or just words of sympathy!)
Cheers 
That’s such a pity.
Is it possible for you to chat with support?
They are open on Thur, Fri: 09:00-12:00
Have your ticket number ready.
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Not easy to do with our jobs, we’ll see if we can make time for it, thanks for the suggestion. Hopefully it won’t be one of those online chat experiences which involves lots of waiting around.
But even if you hope to get a spare part on warranty, why not just ordering one and try to get a refund later?
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We didn’t get chance to do the online chat, maybe next week.
Nice idea about the refund thanks, but will they do that? I don’t want store credit.
Nothing yet. I’m appalled by Fairphone support’s lack of response.
Thanks for your report @madbilly I am starting to have the same symptom. My device is 3yrs old. I will change the USB−C block and see.
Hi @nicofonk,
Have you opened up your Fairphone to see the state of the USB port module? I think that the one on my wife’s phone broke the solder pads because of too much strain put on the charging port by the cable. Ironically the cable is a Fairphone cable, the second one because the first one broke, I suspect because of too much strain! The Fairphone cable is very heavy, I think that when positioned in the classic phone-charging position of phone flat on table with the cable hanging over the edge on its way to the power socket the weight bends the plug mouldings and strains the solder connections inside AND strains the solder connections for the port as well. When done for a long time this obviously ends up breaking the solder. It took about 2 years for the cable to break and 3 years for the USB-C port to break.
We did eventually get a response, but only by using the chat service, thanks @Lidwien for the suggestion (note for others, the times on their website are CET, they are not localised according to where the viewer is based). It seems that somehow the ticket got ignored, they’re not sure how.
FP support said there were two options, 1) send it off for repair", 2) they send a new part in the post. My wife wisely went with option 2 and it took her 10 minutes (probably less) to swap the parts over and test the charging was now working properly.
Thanks everyone
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