Hello,
I had recurrent problems with the mic of my FP3+. After talking with technical service of FP, I was finally proposed to send it to an after-sales service as it is still under warranty. It has now been a month since I have sent it and I still have no news of my phone. No need to say that no temporary phone is proposed in this case.
So I wonder how sustainable is this way of working if you need a backup non fair phone anyway?
Cheers
And did you ask why it takes that long for the repair center? Are you sure they did not somehow forget about your ticket? We see a lot complains about slow support, however so far not about slow performance of the repair center in France.
Your situation isnāt unique, support can be very slow and tedious etc.
As for sustainability I agree itās not for the user as in sustaining a working phone but as you note, without an immediate replacement, temporarily or otherwise then a user will be without a phone for a while unless they have a back up.
As phones become more of an āessentialā item for some people it makes sense that they have aback up as whether for a few days or weeks some people get a bit freaked out at not having a phoneā¦
So when did you last hear from Fairphone and do you have a ticket number. Occasionally Rae, a Fairphone employee, can be contacted when things go awry.
I have sent my phone to the French repair center on the 27th of October. I have then contacted my FP contact (Joe) a couple of times. On the 21th of November, he told me āwe are yet to hear from them on the progress of your repair.ā
I have contact with Joe but he is slow answering. I am sure he is very busy but I really feel I wouldnāt recommend FP because of this way of working.
If you have a ticket number you can send it via a private meassge to Rae to ask for help.
Could you tell me how to do it?
Go here and press āMessageā and then send her a message with your ticket number. Then hope for the best.
Thank you very much for your help. I have just sent her a message.
I have to admit that this makes me unsure if I have made the right decision to buy a Fairphone 4 and not so sure five years warranty is worth much.
And it also makes me unhappy that Fariphone is not answering here and helps the customers having problems.
Honestly, one of the biggest issues I have with the Fairphone is that I donāt know how their support will treat me the day it needs to be repaired.
Out of all phones Iāve ever had, Iāve only had a phone break on its own once, so the risk of it happening again isnāt super-high I guess.
Yet it still worries me. Their support taking months to respond doesnāt seem to be something out of the ordinary at all.
Not to put a cheery case on it. Not many phones are so innovative and modular so I would expect the problems to be significantly more frequent than say, Samsung of Apple.
On the brighter side, I have 2 FP3s over two years old with never a problem and one of those was dropped down the toilet in the first month. And with a daughter with a year old FP4 all seems fine here.
Still the delays in support are no doubt can no doubt be somewher between frustrating and painful.
If you expected that on a public forum then Iām not sure what to say. Common sense says that any business will not run support over a public forum. Now and then acknowledgments are posted, to long term issues and updates but that seems fine to me.
As long as Fairphone stay in business Iām sure the 5 year warranty with stretch that far though it may seem like a bit of an elastic band at times.
I hope that those querying their decision go over their reasons. If it was for Fairtrade and treating other better then the buck stops here with the purchaser.
If it was for reliability hmm! over time that will probably work out.
If it was for instant gratification, that may be short lived when a problem arises and then go back to point 2 above and whilst you wait hopefully you can avail yourself of a backup phone in an emergency and use point 1 to say, whatever I did the ārightā thing.
Even when itās the companyās own forum? I strongly disagree.
If you go on the official The Sims forum, you can see responses from EA on there
If you go on the Blizzard forum, you can regularly see Blizzard responses there
Same with Signal
Same with most, if not near all indie companies
Microsoft has plenty of official responses on their forums
Literally anything involving GitHub has an official response from a developer
Even then, with companies like Samsung and Apple they have one of two things:
Fairphone has none of that. Instead they have a 5 year warranty which is admirable, but itās ultimately a suboptimal experience if the company is near unreachable when you try to use it.
The biggest issue of all when it comes to the software is that you can brick your phone when you lock the bootloader, as the bootloader becomes impossible to unlock again when you lock it. This is definitely a software flaw, as thatās not the case on any other phone Iāve ever used. On a Pixel 6a for example you can flash a custom rom, lock the bootloader and then unlock it again from the settings if anything goes wrong.
And we have no idea if they are even aware of the above issue, because theyāve never once commented on it. Same with the promixity sensor problem when in daylight.
Well, as you know yourself, this is exactly what happens in other forums, e.g. at community.frame.work, where they do provide assistance from time to time for the framework laptop.
But I damit that this is above standard.
Iām pretty sure Fairphone have commente on both, but Iām not fussed so wonāt search for the posts.
The only thing I could find was this
Sometimes, after locking the bootloader, the phone can not boot anymore. Please contact our Customer Support team if you encounter this.
When, if ever, a fix will be released is unclear at the moment.
Isnāt it a simple way to protect themselves about a court case ?
I am a bit surprised. My partnerās FP3+ had a problem that required a new bottom module and the phone was away less than ten days from being given to courier this end. What was a pain was the number of things I was asked to do to confirm the problem despite my initial email having given enough information to confirm it.
Yes I had that ādire demandā but I suppose a) they want to check and ask in the order they do and b) messages may not get passed along the system well enough