@paulamrk
The support is obliged to help you, and swap the phone for another if they can’t fix it remotely. They should also offer you a refund, but you’ll get full or partial, depending on WHEN you started complaining about the problem (they look at the delay between phone reception and start of problem).
I am now in the process of preparing my first return, which took me many emails asking the support for it. I have started another post on the matter of what to do if the support doesn’t help :
It is a bit messy due to some people disagreeing on wording, and I plan to make another clear one, once I have my phone swapped by the support.
As far as I understand, you have already opened a ticket on Fairphone support. Now you got to ask them over and over to get refund or get your phone swapped. It worked for me and for another guy on that thread.
At any moment, if you consider that the support isn’t respecting the consumer law, you can decide other actions, as explained in the link above.
I asked them for a refund and they said that this is not possible as I did not ask for it within the first 14 days of buying the phone. I got it back, repaired, which (they say) only took an software update. I can’t check this and don’t even wanna check it anymore. I contacted customer support again, quoting their warranty, and now I am waiting for a reply. I don’t think, however, that I see any money. I even bought the camera module upgrade back in September (which was delivered waaaay after the initial date) and asked if they would take them back as I don’t use the phone anymore…of course the won’t do that. This is very very very annoying.
Assume users “with fault” are equally distributed.
Now devide FP-Users in two groups: “Forum” and “Non Forum”.
So “All” = “Forum” + “Non Forum”.
Now you calculate the partition where the percentage of phones with fault for all users F, for “Forum” Users A and “Non Forum” users B.
F * “All” = A * “Forum” + B * “Non Forum”.
Then we get F = (A*“Forum” + B*“Non Forum”)/“All”. (1)
With the poll we’d approximate A*“Forum”.
Assuming we know “All” we just don’t know B*“Non Forum”.
The assumption was “with fault” is equally distributed, therefore we assume A=B.
We also get “Non Forum” = “All” - “Forum”.
Now we know B*“Non Forum”.
With formula (1) we now get an educated guess for F.
Or more easily A=B=F.
Obviously a lot of things are not clear. But equal distribution is reasonable (why would the part of faulty phones change through demografics?).
How so?
Users with faulty devices should be much more probable to hit the forums in search for fixes, so distribution would not be equal, and the view in the forums would be skewed, but you wouldn’t know just how heavily skewed.
But it’s an academic exercise anyway.
It shouldn’t really matter how wide-spread an issue might perhaps be. Issues need to be resolved no matter whether it’s one single customer having them or any large number.
The customers have rights, resellers have rights (if involved), Fairphone have rights.
In the end it’s boring unromantic legal stuff that matters, which gets blanked out or blurred often enough for idealistic reasons (as commendable as they may be).
Ask again, they will offer a refund based on when you first report your problem to the support. This is a extract from an email I received the 20th of January :
"
Purchase your device back according to our depreciation scheme.
Purchase date: end of September 2019.
Purchase value in 2019: €450
Contact customer support: end of August 2020.
Based on the device’s age (11 months at the moment of your request) we estimate a refund of €220
Did you contact customer support for this issue prior to August 2020? If so, please, just tell me the email or the ticket number and I will adjust the date.
I can ask for approval to swap your device with a new one.
"
You got to keep in asking. As long as the phone does not work, you still have the possibility to get money back. That is because of the guarantee. They may apply a fee, based on how long it took between when you received the phone and when you started complaining
I’m also not so convinced about half/half distribution.
I do think people complain more that saying they are happy.
But on the other hand, I don’t think close to 1/2 of the people would go to the forum. I would suspect 10% max of the user go to the forum.
I have no way to back that up.
One way would be to get first how many FP3 are sold.
They hopped 43K by end of 2019. Using proportionality, and starting date sale being early september 2019 (in France only I believe), that would be 43K per trimestre, that is 43*5 (5 trimester since sept 2019). 215k units. On can argue that many phones were sold at the beginning, when it just came out. Let’s take a margin and divide by 2, that is around 100k FP3.
Let us say the initial sails burst accounts for 43k/2=21.5k phones.
Then we get 21.5k phones per trimester.
Ten we get 21.5k * 5 + 21.5k = 129k phones.
Note that 5 trimester means this trimester included.
taking the average of both methods gives
(129k + 107) / 2 = 118K
Considering the 10% of user being on the forum, that is wild guess, and reality is probably much less. Are they 11.8K people on the forum as a whole (FP 2 and 3) ?
what’s the ratio FP2/FP3 users ?
Considering half/half, it’s 11k FP3 user (I think less, coz FP2 is been around longer)
We get back to a rough estimate of 10%
This statement by @Bas_tien doesn’t make sense to me.
I would think it is incorrect, as in, “if they can’t fix the phone remotely” then you can send it in for repair, it does not mean you will get a replacement phone, as in " swap the phone"
A very recent tip from the german thread on sound problems:
It seems, that for at least two users the problem was solved by using another app:
“Simple Dialer”
This app is available from F-Droid, which is another plus. Just follow the link.
One user has reported, that he hasn’t got any troubles for more than six weeks now.
I hope this will help at least some of you too.
If that should indeed help, please report it to support as well, as this might help finding the root cause of the problem.
I saw this one too.
I installed Simple Dialer yesterday. Made it the main app for calling. Then I cleared the cache of the regular dialer and uninstalled it.
The first few calls seem to improve voice quality.
I’ll give an update after a few days
I keep my fingers crossed!!
It’s at least a temporary solution, that does not cause too many troubles, though the app might lack some functions one is used to.
@teider
Was it about voice quality ?
Or about silent calls (none side hear the other), happening randomly, which can only be fixed by reboot once it starts to happen ?
If silent calls, have you tried to trigger the problem by opening a game and playing an add ?
I was using that to trigger it : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.computerlunch.evolution&hl=en&gl=US
It starts with bad audio quality (on the receiving end) and it ends with me being almost impossible to hear.
Too bad the option for a different dialer app also failed, the problem persists.
This seams to be a different problem than the one targeting that very topic. You may open another topic if you want.
In any case, do contact the support, and write them over and over about wanting to get refund or return your phone for repair. They cannot refuse that, as long as you have already done “reasonable” troubleshooting, which I think you did with your lasts posts.
I’m concerned the above quote is a bit awry, and given the authors experience, as posted elsewhere, to which they privided link(s) I am at not in agreement with the advice.
Fairphone won’t accept what users here thinks is ‘reasonable’ they will probably ask you do tests and send screenshots of the build etc.
But further as @Bas_tien stated this post is different from your issue, i will see if i can find a link to something more akin to your issue, though it may be no more helpful.
So yes, put in an official support, if this continues for a week or two, but only once, please
I haven’t the patience to read all 212 posts to see what you have done to resolve the issue, so It may well be a useful idea to start another topic with a more specific title relating to your issue.
