I flubbed my Fairphone pitch to a friend

Dude, you didn’t flub it - you did great! You were fair and open about FP. Unless you can still convince her, she will buy an iPhone. Now. But in 1,5 years, tops, she will be utterly annoyed.

By the new OS that makes the phone slower, by the fact that she can’t find a way to set two alarm clocks, by the fact that the battery drops from 80% to dead on chilly days, a broken screen that makes it a relatively expensive cutting board, the way you have to insert GIFs into WhatsApp, you name it, it will annoy her.

And then, the seed you planted will have grown into a beautiful rainbow (what do you mean ‘that’s not how that works’?!). She might not even come to you for advice and just go ahead and buy it, and tell others about how great and important the idea behind the phone is, and become an advocat of Fairphone.

And people might think that she made the decision because of the hippie she is. But that will only be a part of the truth. And you know it.

My apologies for all my blunt optimism here.

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You can read a lot of different (negative) Fairphone user experiences here in the forum, mainly OS (ROM) issues where no user can do anything else than wait for a Fairphone update to solve it in months. These users had their Fairphone experience in this (reverse) order:

Imagine, that thousants of customers do not even know about this forum or the support problem, cause their phone just works perfect?

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So you really do your reasoning like this “If it is not reported in the forum, it simply does not exist!”? Some people do not even seek for help in this forum, they just sell their Fairphone and buy something else that works…

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Your reasoning

  • that because we read some negative user experience in this forum, stressed often by the same people
  • there will very probably exist many, many more negative user experiences outside of this forum

…is of the same type ElKrasso uses.

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Not really, because the forum threads are consolidated, and lists of known issues are maintained. But these issues have been there, and are still not resolved. What would you like to tell those users that are confrontated with these bugs even after months?

Ok let’s go back to the topic

Brian didn’t introduce her to the problems that are a real pain, as per this forum and the dire support when things go wrong. To imply that a user could replace a camera etc. was far from the reality of what users have to deal with. So well done Beth not to bother as it may have been a terrible experience and wouldn’t have saved a goldfish let alone a planet. At least you still have a friend :slight_smile:

However though it must be noted that maybe 99% of users don’t come here with a problem, but that could be a) because they are too embarrassed after hitching their ego to the eco-friendly band wagon or b) because they expected this and are prepared to get out and push the wagon uphill and not expect someone else to come to the rescue soon, if ever.

Still that does leave 99% happy enough to take a bite and chew on the consequences. Roll-on the FP4 I’m in this for the long haul.

~ I think ~

Hmmm! I may just use this experience to give up phones altogether.

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@amoun
I wish, I could have given you more than one like on this last posting.

That’s exactly the point.

All the discussion above is going very astray from the thread openers post.
I already think about splitting this thread, to open up the space for the other experiences, that @Brian_Fitzgerald has asked for.

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To nobody and all.
Whoa, wait a minute. Forum, what’s that for? In the smartphone sector, to solve problems, right? All those people who own a Fairphone without problems don’t need to talk in a forum. I think there are more happy Fairphone users without problems out there than unhappy Fairphone users here on the forum. If you look on other smartphone forums you will find a lot of problems people have with their phone. OK some just read along without logging in or describing their problem, but that is the case in any public forum. In my opinion, the problems Fairphone has with whatever are being hyped up. That’s a ratio calculation that still doesn’t add up for me compared to others.
By the way, I don’t have any problems with my FP3+, but I’m technically proficient enough to trust myself to help others, which I also do among my friends. They tend to ask me questions rather than logging on to the forum. I’m probably not the only one.
Everyone has the opportunity to decide.

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Agreed and I’ve never had to join another forum since 1997 to get help. I could either fix it or go to the shop and get immediate help.

However my experience with Fairphone is different, so different that a) I decided I would buy one for my daughter’s intent (she’s a human rights barrister) but then kept is as I wasn’t sure she’d like it. Then after months of useful forum activity and useless support help I discussed with my daughter further and decided to pay for her to buy one thinking I could help her out with what I could see was likely to be a disappointment ~ and right I was in terms of phone usability and moreso in support.

Sure the problems may be hyped up as there is slow and inefficient official resolution to what seem to many as sloppy OS updates/software abilities, and dodgy assembly Oh! and did I forget woefull support.

But as @BertG said this can go off topic hence my reference to my experience on getting a phone for my daughter which brought me here.

Hi,

Apple are certainly the worst in their category… I mean GAFAM.
Sure, they (Apple’s) make nice machines but not only did they use Free code and hijacked it to make it proprietary but by their commercial policy they make people captive to their brand. Besides, Apple is the archetype of the capitalist company at its worst.

Your friend Beth, who seems to be a humanist and very sensitive to the great ills of our world, should look more closely when she buys an iPhone. If she doesn’t want a Fairphone, she can always (through you since you are her “technician”) get a second hand phone compatible with a Free Rom like LineageOS.

Hopefully you will be able to convince her.
:slightly_smiling_face:

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I dated a vegan(you know, the one who has ‘I’m vegan’ sticker everywhere), in my opinion she was going through identity crisis (if you can’t accept your inner baggage, naturally you would create a persona to repress that baggage, which would make you inadvertently psychotic, hating everything you dislike about oneself).
So yea, there were plenty of times when she would phase out from her ‘goody two shoes’ persona and would give up at the slightest opportunity of responsibility.

I think it was fear of the unknown – All she mentioned was the idea that she might get a phone that REQUIRED her to take it apart, but I’m sure the unknown of switching to Android for a lifelong Apple user was in the back of her mind too. (That was a barrier for me as well, truth be told. But I got over it.)

Now everyone kiss. :rofl:

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I dated a vegan(you know, the one who has ‘I’m vegan’ sticker everywhere), in my opinion she was going through identity crisis (if you can’t accept your inner baggage, naturally you would create a persona to repress that baggage, which would make you inadvertently psychotic, hating everything you dislike about oneself).

…still wondering what this anecdote about a vegan has to do with anything in this topic… gives the impression of idealists bashing idealists…

I suppose the ‘vegan’ badge is the most set indicator of an individual that ‘cares’ for the environment whilst the ‘Fair’ badge, in terms of buying to relieve human suffering is just not as attractive.

Maybe we should have or call it the must have phone for Vegans, then Beth may have bought it.

‘Beth’ must be questioning her state of play if she’s reading this.

But @Brian_Fitzgerald did it half right he warned her of the seriousness of being fair to human, which vegan principals, luckily, don’t clarify.

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That is a pretty radical sight. ‘Beth’ has the right to rely on quality assurance as well as other users have. If someone forces something on someone else who cannot use it right, it will lead to frustration. And a frustrated person who “recommends” such a product to another person will not make the world a better place…

I see no application of force anywhere, just the idea that if you can handle a screwdriver you can choose to repair the phone by replacing modules. Mind you, if it could be fixed by a hammer blow so much the better, screwing requires a little more intellect.

But I see no quality issue that 'Beth ’ had to deal with, except her own fear of not being up to the task, and no application of force, unless you count @Brian_Fitzgerald 's introduction to the notion of buying a Fairphone as using his power as her friend as lacking in care for Beth ~ which I am inclined to accept if that’s where you are going with this.

a) I can see how the notion of repair can be off-putting
b) Unlike @Brian_Fitzgerald I wouldn’t encourage anyone to buy a ‘Fairphone’
c) If fair is a universal value it can’t be assessed for an individual person or planet ~ all intellectual entities would have to agree on exploitation of even non sentient beings let alone themselves.

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Definition of misoneism

: a hatred, fear, or intolerance of innovation or change

Point was labels are meaningless.
For example:

Trying to keep this on track.

The OP @Brian_Fitzgerald wasn’t labelling someone in what I would consider an inappropriate way. Objects have ID’s i.e. label to identify them to third parties.

Beth is just a label, it has many meanings but here it seems to refer to a female human _ No problem with the label there, it means something to me

Vegan usually refers to someone who takes it upon themselves to avoid using animals as they cannot give informed consent, this applies to people to, hence the Fairtrade label too. There is no finite definition of either of these two labels but they clearly have meaning to those that use them.

So I get that Beth is vegan - labelling as such seems fine though vegan is dynamic and is a growing concern.

Environmentalist is more vague than vegan and allows for more scope but a label it is and in this case the meaning is highly argumentative to me, but it is not meaningless in the sense that it has no meaning,

Given your Pope Innocent analogy I get that Pope Innocent is a label like Beth and has meaning in that it defines an individual apart from others.

It is unlikely that anyone in this post wants to discuss the meaning of individual words or the letters thereof, as it’s about Brain and Beth, more so Brian in his view that he could have done differently. No doubt Brian could have used other words but he did what many people may do and that is to try and bring someone on board his ship.

Maybe we could call them
Brian the Innocent
and
Beth the Innocent

I hope you see the meaning in this. Brian stuck his neck out more than I would and . . . .

???

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