Hello everyone! I thought I would ask a couple questions and maybe rant a bit since I feel pretty frustrated.
I’m trying to return my FP2 display which became defective some 7 months after acquiring the phone. I first contacted support on 7/7/2017. After a lengthy and slow email chain they told me 10 days ago to package the phone and book a time for DHL Express to pick up the display. I am pretty disappointed and suprised that to repair a product in-warranty I actually have to acquire a box and packaging material to be able to ship the display. Shouldn’t fixing a product in-warranty be free?
Then I have to book a time, which means staying home the whole day since the courier can arrive at any time. I don’t really have such a day this week, but since I would like to get my phone working again soon, some of my errands can give way I guess. Except the site where I’m supposed to book the time does not let me do it, just says “Something went wrong while booking the shipment.” The error message returns 0 google results. Anybody know why this happens? Well at least it let me book a time for the next monday, a week from now.
The email where they tell you how to ship your fairphone product includes as attachmens two shipping labels for which the first one should be put inside the package and the second one on the outside. It also has a packing slip attachment which isn’t mentioned in the email or seemingly elsewhere, but I printed it and put it in the package for now. Anybody know if this is the correct procedure?
Now I hope that I have packaged my display sufficiently, and that I will get my phone working before it’s been broken for half a year.
I’ll try to remember to update this when I get it back.
Update: Sending my old Fairphone display went off without troubles and the new display arrived quickly and works without issues. All is well in the end
First of all, if that is any help for you: you’re not the only one who is frustrated by fairphone. My screen broke down in may. After I immediately contacted fairphone, I could finally send in my screen 5 weeks ago (more than 4 months after I reported the defect to fairphone!). However, although the screen arrived at their warehouse, they seem to have lost my parcel and eventhough I called them already 4 times, nobody seem to be able to actually help me. So don’t put your hopes too high, just because you can send in your phone. That does not mean that a replacement is near.
Now to your questions:
It sounds like a similar problem I had when I tried to book a time for pickup. It turned out that is was a problem of the fairphone return portal, and I could contact DHL directly to arrange a pickup time, as I explained here.
I also did it the same way as you did and it was not correct. The DHL currier who picked up my parcel wanted everything printed out again and I had to hand it to him just like that. Then he also wanted a commercial innvoice, that they apparently need for the export. You can find that here. I guess to be on the save side, just print out everything again, including the commercial innvoice.
You have my sympathy and I really feel for you and hope you will be having a working phone again really soon.
Except on this one point:
You don’t have to pay for the shipment and the repair of course. But the packaging?
What do you expect? Them sending you a return parcel? The phone came in a box, that you could have kept for a case like this one. I wouldn’t know of any sender that gives you a refund for the packaging. That always is on you. I keep quite a few boxes in my cellar for that purpose.
The problem with the return portal is indeed a known problem described by @langga in his linked posting from September 25th. Hopefully FP will be able to solve that issue soon.
But please don’t get frightend by the experience of @langga; judging from the postings in this forum, the long waiting times tend to be quite normal (unfortunately), while that is not the case for loosing parcels.
Same goes for contacting them by phone. It’s the first time I read, that support seems unwilling to help. Maybe someone from fairphone being in the forum regularly (@Douwe, @anon12454812??) can look into the case of @langga.
Maybe “unwilling” was the wrong word. “Not able to help”, might be the better description. Apperantly the only thing they can do is forwarding a request to their logistical center to have a look at where my parcel is. It seems that the logistical center is as busy as everybody else there and in the last 4 weeks nobody seemed to had time to answer one of the three requests that the support team sended to them.
Don’t get me wrong, the people on the phone are really friendly but it is just frustrating anyway. Everybody there just seemes to be drwoning in work since months and I really feel sorry for them. But it seems that they just keep forwarding request to one another, instead that one would actually do something about it.
Similar frustration about how much time the process takes. And on top of that, I have sent my screen 12 days ago: DHL confirmed delivery but I haven’t heard anything from Fairphone, not even a confirmation that they received the package. Not very professionnal.
