It helped for a few months…
I tried to demand it before but they always have excuses. I wonder if I used my US card to pay for it. I can dispute the transaction and Visa will take the money back from them. I’ll see how support responds this time… Going through my email now, so if they responded, I’ll add another comment.
Why would I “fake” this? Go look at Google Maps. Multiple people have left reviews because of this. Call me a liar all you want, but it won’t change the facts that this company’s support is a complete joke, and the quality is poor, at least on the first units.
And the “it didn’t happen to me” argument… SO no one ever wins the lottery, gets cancer, goes to space, or gets hit by a falling branch, right?
I didn’t have these problems on any other Android phone, and they (the software issues) only started after an update forced on me because I couldn’t disable the notifications. I disabled auto update in the app store, but that didn’t include system updates.
Not sure how you can be so confident that “e/OS” has “no surveillance.”
I wanted to send it back multiple times, every time they refused.
I don’t quite understand are you saying
a) you’ve contacted support
b) gone through all the checks Faiphone ask
c) the phone still doesn’t work
d) they didn’t ask you to send it in?
Did Fairphone say the warranty is void, anyway if that is the case they would offer to repair it for a cost.
If the above is just about correct and you have the support ticket number etc. maybe @formerFP.Com.Manager could help ??
Hi @randallshamlet,
I am so sorry to hear about your experience and completely understand your frustration. Could you perhaps send me a message with either your 6-digit support request number or the email address you’ve been using to contact us? That way I can flag your case internally and have one of my colleagues in our support team reach out to you asap.
Thanks,
Rae
ll I was really sick for a couple months and finally sent in my phone… Got a free label and sent it in. “In warranty.” The “service center” gets my phone and now they are holding it hostage. If I don’t pay them within a month, they will “destroy the device.” They claim it won’t charge because of “improper use.” What a complete joke. Here is a copy of the document they sent me:
D498313-20220125.pdf (63.7 KB)
What I read is that you can get your phone back if you pay 18 €. They worked on it and there is the delivery cost but nobody is asking you to pay to fix it.
From the pdf is looks as though you may have had water or dampness ingress which ‘requires’ ‘clean’ and working modules (€129) which seems reasonable, or you can have the phone sent back at a cost of (€18) and you can try and clean and fix the phone alternatively.
So sadly you have voided the warranty. With a modular much more care is needed. If you have previously used phones they may have tolerated your usage. I have older phones, removable back, battery etc, but not all the modules so they were more environmentally stable than the Fairphone.
Maybe there should be warnings on how the phone should be treated.
As for holding the phone ‘hostage’
a) It’s not sentient and is probably very comfortable, so no the phone is not a ‘hostage’ 
b) Holding it for ransom of €18 ~ not really. I imagine you can go and pick it up at your own expense if you don’t want to pay them to send it.
This phone isn’t worth 130 Euros. It hasn’t worked well ever since I got it. I haven’t voided the warranty, and they can’t make a reliable phone. I bought it because it was supposed to be a long lasting reliable phone. Not only that, if the screen was damaged, that doesn’t affect the charger port, so they can’t legally void the entire warranty regardless. They won’t get a penny from me and I am going to file complaints with both the French and Dutch agencies about this hostage situation (don’t care about the semantics of what you want to call it). It is ridiculous.
I was surprised Fairphone has just 3 stars on Google. I wish I noticed that before.
They refuse to fix a phone that hasn’t worked well since the beginning and try to illegally void an entire warranty because they claim the screen is damaged.
I’m surprised the excuse wasn’t drop damage since IIRC the top left corner is cracked. Didn’t really matter or affect the pone at all. I am a cyclist and ride all year. I also often use my devices in high humid environments, but it is known to cause the little “tags” to show water damage when there hasn’t been any, even listed on the Wiki page. They call it “improper use” so I wonder if they are purposefully vague to imply “humidity voids it too.” Every laptop I have ever owned ended up with those tags turning and never had an issue because of it, including in warranty claims with Apple (I had a MacBook that had really weird issues until they replaced most of it and no problems).
It would seem that oxidation implies a ‘careless’ use of the phone and ‘voids’ the warranty.
You may get a court to argue the case that such is unresdonsble.
But it,'s not just the screen two other modules also suffer from oxidation.
Luckily my phone has so far stsyed dry. My daughter dropped her FP3 down the toilet. We soent time cleaning and drying it. The tags are red, so bang goes the warranty, but a year later it is working fine.
One concern I have is that a) they didn’t send detailed images of the oxidation snd b,) if you don’t get the phone back you have no evidence to show they are wrong etc.
So semantics is crutial. There is no hostage. The phone wasn’t taken by force, and all you have to do is get it snd then have a third party assess the phone. Without you doing that it would be very difficult to convince another that Faiphone and their employed repairers are not being reasonable.
European courts are a joke for consumers. They are very expensive and hard to really do much. This is one of the very very very few things the US actually does better: Simple small claims cases. The downside of this is that big companies more easily bully people and little companies through lawsuits than in Europe.
They sent me a picture of the phone with those little points that are designed to show moisture contact, but not the other parts.
I actually dropped an iPhone in a bath once, a week after I bought it. Wow did I panic. I sucked the water out through the charge port. Never had any issues at all with it. I sold it a year later when I upgraded. This was back when you could sell the old version used for more than the upgrade cost, so I just got one every year.
I did have two laptops die from water damage, both caused by a family member putting water on the coffee table next to my laptop and someone knocking it over… I didn’t even bother trying to submit it for a warranty claim because when I opened them up, there was actual corrosion on the motherboards. Both were MacBooks and worth less than the repairs would cost. IIRC one was the one I kept having weird problems with since I bought it, and even though the moisture thingies turned, they never had a problem with it because there was no signs of water damage at all. These computers especially collected moisture when I took them in from the car into a warm, moist house, and you could wipe the water off. I’m sure some of it condensed on the inside as well. I have many times forgotten my phone in the car, and I’d bet water has condensed on and inside the phone because of this. This happens to everyone and phones are designed to handle this. It got to -22 last year, and I constantly go in and out, so it is easy for moisture to condense.
It doesn’t matter if the phone was taken by force or not. They were supposed to pay for shipping to and fro, now they are demanding money or they won’t send it back. That isn’t reasonable and I’m not even sure it is legal. I’ve had devices rejected before and not one company has ever tried to charge for shipping. From what I understand they can’t charge you if it is actually damaged, only if it isn’t at all and you are wasting their time, at least according to Polish law.
Art. 561[2]. § 1 of Polish civil code seems to say they have to, but I’m not a lawyer…
Do you have any statements from Fairphone to say such. I thought it was clear that if you don’t want repairs you can have the phone back at your own expense, after all it didn’t cost you anything to send it, so why should they pay again if you don’t want it repaired.
I note the repair is by a third party and I can imagine if they see the red flags they may use that as a reason to say there is oxidation, which there may be. It also may be very little.
However Cordon will not remove the parts and clean then as a) it would take too long and be therefore more expensive and b) there’s little guaranty it would work.
The parts are from Fairphone, so it is easier and cheaper for Cordon to just swap parts.
I understand Cordon, Fairphones and your approach and if it was me I would pay the carriage to get the phone back and clean it and or get a third party check.
The argument isn’t that you have to pay to get the phone back, that is reasonable, it’s something you want. You want the phone carried to you ~ you pay.
The bigger issue is whether the action of Cordon in assuming oxidation due to discoloured flags is an appropriate response. This is a question to ask Faiphone.
My understanding is that you have a contract with Fairphone not Cordon and they should be the arbitrators of the extent of corrosion and not just take Cordon’s word for it every time. Doing so leaves the customer in the hands of a third party which is extremely unwanted and adds doubt to the validity of Fairphone and the warranty.
Luckily in the UK we still have a small claims court where I can lodge an application. I’m surprised if you can’t find something similar.
Good luck with any challenge you make, but if you do not get the phone back you undermine your claim that it has any value.
While I can understand your frustration and your whole experience was clearly not great, I am afraid that there is not much more anyone in a community forum can do to help you - apart from letting you vent your anger.
Still, my advice - as well as the advice of various others before me - would be that you pay the shipping fees to get your damaged phone back before it is lost. If you really want to take further action, this will make it easier for you than the alternative.
That they ask you for shipping fees at all is simply because they accepted it under the assumption of a warranty claim (which would have been without fees) but because of the damage they found they do not consider it so after closer inspection. If this assessment is correct or not is a different question that you will have to pursue yourself if you wish to do so. But it is quite normal to charge a fee for cases that are not considered as being under warranty - some companies even charge shipping and handling fees just to process your warranty case.
Given that warranty is a voluntary service provided by the manufacturer with relatively large liberties regarding the exact conditions, I’m not sure what your legal case would be there, to be honest.
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.