Yeah, maybe I misjudged the weight of the spare parts in the ‘buy stuff’ equation a bit. It initially just kinda seemed to me that simply buying a new Fairphone will give you disproportionally many points compared to all the other actions. We’ll see I guess.
I guess I just tend to use higher sustainability-standards when judging products and programs coming from Fairphone, since sustainability and repairability is the main selling point here. It’s still better than much of the stuff provided by other players in the Smartphone Industry, I was/am just sceptical wether it’ll further improve the situation from the level where we’re at now.
What is the official state of the program now? I for one would say we could consider it available, now that it’s listed in the official shop profile and people can sign up and complete challenges with their regular shop-accounts. It’s still a bit buggy though. (And the missing agreement checkbox for the Terms and Conditions may be an issue, if I didn’t miss anything.)
Edit:
Oh, that changes things a bit. I somehow missed that part completely when reading your response before. It’s not as extremely disproportionally weighted as I first thought then.
@Marta_Artigas I’m a little bit confused: After my first 50 points I got an email that I’ve leveled up to copper and in that mail I read that this includes free shipping. However on the keep club page I read that only from the next step on this is included. I didn’t find the keep club terms and conditions yet to see what might be right but anyway, it should be consistent somehow.
And of course a pity that the almost seven birthdays of my FP2 don’t count, but that’s okay.
Yeah, it also took me some time to stumble upon any terms and conditions, since they weren’t linked on the signup page when I signed up, but they do exist on the following page:
I have yet to study the whole thing, but according to my Strg+F search shipping is not mentioned in there at all. Neither specification of the various Tier levels beyond their existence.
I still cannot obtain points for signing up for the newsletter. I put my email address, confirm the subscription, receive an email confirmation about completing the Keep Challenge and that’s it - no points obtained, the challenge still greyed, is it just me?
I am a very happy owner of two FP3 phones (one from 2020, the other from 2021), both with /e/OS on them.
And while I was quite stoked about the new Keep Club programme and that it says it primarily aims to reward using your phone as long as possible, I am very disappointed that it limits the programme only to stock OS that Fairphone installs on the device.
5.1 You collect Points by completing various activities that fall into one of the following categories:
Joining the club: Receive 20 points for consenting to join the Keep Club
Phone’s Birthday: Earn 20 points for every year you keep your phone! To be eligible, please enter your IMEI number in the required form in your account. We calculate your phone’s birthday based on the date you booted up for the first time. You can only collect birthday points for one phone at a time, the most recent one you entered into the form. This activity is limited to Fairphone 3 or Fairphone 3+, Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5 models running on Android. Neither Fairphone 2, nor Fairphones powered with alternative OSes (such as e/OS/) can be used.
/e/OS is an Android system, just as Fairphone’s Android install is. An alternative OS would be e.g. SailfishOS or Phosh or Plasma Mobile, which are directly Linux-based.
(side note: “/e/OS” is spelled with wrong in the T&C)
I fail to see the logic in this limitation (as well as why FP2 and FP1 do not count, but that is a separate issue). If this is about supporting longevity of the phones and avoiding electronic waste, it should not matter what software it is running. Especially after Fairphone’s, admittedly very generous, warranty expires and its software gets EOL, if one would want to continue using the hardware, one would need to use a community-developed ROM.
Heyyy! Thanks for letting me know, cause that is indeed a bug that should be fixed soon.
Also, good feedback on the T&Cs. I have shared it internally so hopefully this will change shortly. Since the program is quite new and freshly launched, we are still experiencing some issues
Regarding FP2 not being part of the program, that’s because we do not have a way to track FP2 and it would have made it quite complicated. We love the longevity, but here was rather impossible to award it anyway, please keep using it for many more years!
5.1 Phone’s Birthday: Earn 20 points for every year you keep your phone! To be eligible, please enter your IMEI number in the required form in your account. We calculate your phone’s birthday based on the date you booted up for the first time. You can only collect birthday points for one phone at a time, the most recent one you entered into the form
4.2 You can view Your Points under Your Keep Club account and track your progress and tier status. You maintain Your Points for 3 years after which the Points which You have not yet redeemed will automatically expire.
I got 20 points for my three-years-old FP3 which is almost 4… Is it because the points for the first three years are gone following the condition 4.2 ?
Anyway I don’t believe that this program pushes you to keep your phone since points last only three years. It implies you have to use them every three years or they are useless. It should be extended to at least ten years since the FP5 should be updated that long.
From my understanding those points are effectively meant to give you a discount on spare parts, etc. in the Fairphone shop. They are not meant to be collected indefinitely as some sort of trophy. As such, the 3 year validity period is not unexpected for me and the limit is likely also due to legal/financial restrictions on the part of Fairphone. It is likely that you can make use of them for one spare part or another within those 3 years as some part usually breaks at some point - even if it’s “only” the battery.
If you’re getting to the expiration limit of the points, you could also consider buying spare parts for other people (and sharing the savings) or just donating them for a good cause as offered within the program.
anyway, please keep using it for many more years!