Teaming up with Vodafone

Sky Mobile are also doing a deal with Fairphone. Not sure if this has been mentioned on these forums already; when I searched for “sky” I was redirected to “skype”.
https://www.sky.com/shop/mobile/phones/fairphone/

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The list of resellers - including Vodafone and Sky - can be found here:

This list of course is subject to changes and not always up to date. :wink:

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Unfortunately the staff at my local branch of Vodafone haven’t heard anything about the “strategic partnership” with Fairphone. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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You could try to englighten them by presenting them with a printout of the Vodafone press release:
:uk: (vodafone.com)

If you enter the homepage: https://www.vodafone.com
you get a list of countries to chose from.
I selecte e.g. Italy and for that country you get the following results for searching for Fairphone:

https://www.vodafone.it/portal/Privati/Tariffe-e-Prodotti/Prodotti/Smartphone/Fairphone

So, maybe, there is one for your country as well, you could show them. :wink:

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I went to Vodafone in Cheltenham, UK, last week to see if I could fondle a FP3 but the person who I spoke to there didn’t even know the brand, they said “Fair what?”! In fact their knowledge of what they stock was so bad they just said “We only really have Apple, Samsung, Huawei…”.

So, still some work to for Vodafone and Fairphone.

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LOL:

As in:
“Can I have a Fairphone”
“A what? Never heard that, we don’t have that.”
“But it says so on your Homepage.”
“It does?” Visits his company home page for the very first time - ever.

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Yes, @corvuscorax it went pretty much like that! Except for the last part, I don’t think he was interested enough to check and I didn’t have time to stand there and explain Fairphone to him unfortunately.

The range of smartphones they had was pretty limited and almost identical to all the other smartphone shops, so I get the impression they’re not interested in giving customers a choice, no matter what is written on their website.

Cheers :slightly_smiling_face:

Well, I think the existence and validation of these sales clerks all revolve around the number of contracts they sell.

For that they need to be able to push the most popular and sought after phone models for a price that at first glance looks too good to be true (until you read the fine print of the 24 month contract) - being knowledgeable about a niche phone that only a small number of usually highly educated potential Fairphone users want is not going to affecting his sale-quota significantly

(Especially once those users figure out that it might potentially be cheaper in the long run to get a Fairphone from Fairphone shop without a contract and maybe even sim-lock)

Vodafone has a high interest to have Fairphone in their portfolio so they can say “we care about Faretrade” - good for their image.

They (especially their sale-clerks) have however no immediate reason to push this phone to their clients beyond the models natural demand though. It likely doesn’t matter particularly much to Vodafone’s balance which phone you actually take, as long as you sign their contract :wink:

Saying Vodafone sells phones would be like saying “the fisherman sells worms”… it’s effectively only the bait on the hook :slight_smile:

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This reflects how less they actually care for (potential) customers.
All what they want is your money and signature for long-term contracts.

After having heard of what different persons I know in person could experience with Voda**** over the years and also TV reports and news, I personally simply would not touch anything that starts with “Voda…”
Imo this is the most corrupt provider one could find on the planet.
Even one of the (most) reliable providers called Unitymedia is facing massive (technical) problems with services since Vod*** took over them. Also a statement from one I know personal having been a long-term Unitymedia customer.
Old statements (2013) does not invert misbehave.

Nice for Fairphone, no option for me.

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Same here. This happened to me twice actually. The first time with a DSL provider called Arcor. It got taken over by Voda-f., and it became a customer hell. Service quality was still kind of OK, but woe on you if you ever had a problem. The longest time I had spent in the waiting cue of customer support was 4.5 hours, before the line was simply hung up on me and I had to call anew. Of course they charged for those 4 hours by the minute. (Back then that was stilllegal) The second time was with a cable provider, which first got bought up by Unitymedia, which then - as you mentioned - got bought up by Voda-f*.
Voda-f* is a textbook example of the decompositing effects infrastructure olgipopols have on a market, as within a reasonable timespan for each infrastructure domain (landline, cable, power) there will be only one remaining provider in each location. in some cases regulation helps a little bit, as it enforces landline monopolists to let resellers use their lines at a fixed rate, or in case of cellphones, requires frequencies to be bought by at least 2 different providers, but that is still far too few competition. In the end the customer has to pay whatever the provider demands for whatever poor service the provider supplies, as the cost of creating new infrastructure by far exceeds the potential gains for a new market entry.

maybe constellation satellite internet services like StarLink and OneWeb can mitigate that to some degree in a few years.

Can we have satellite terminal support in FP4 ? :wink:

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In the UK I’ve not had problems with Vodafone, I’ve always found their customer service to be pretty good no matter how little I actually spent with them.

Anyway, the point about the sales assistants only really being interested in selling something and in the commission they get is probably true. For any OEM to break into high street retail they need to pay the retailer a huge amount to get priority treatment. As an example, the number of Motorolas I saw was miniscule.

Cheers :slight_smile:

This is amazing and I’m all up for it. Got rid of Samsung a few years ago, went to the Pixel series because of more regular and more timely Android updates - but still all of the Google services pre-installed.

Now, this leads towards my real question: does Vodafone deliver the FP3 with the OS untouched, i.e. using the original Android installed by FP, or are they replacing that with their own “extended” version. OK, I should probably ask Vodafone that question but I have more faith in the community here rather than the VF salesforce.

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Fairphone does not produce phones with a modified OS at the moment. There has been one earlier case of a reseller selling phones with additional apps on them, but a Fairphone employee quickly pointed out that that was not supposed to be the case.

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The FP2 did have a carrier app present in the software image. This would only become active when a SIM card from that carrier was detected. I haven’t heard anyone mention anything about a carrier app on the FP3 yet, and there have been people looking at removing anything non-essential (so I’d guess they’d have noticed).

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From my experience in Germany, I would conclude, that a salesperson in a phone shop is - in general - some student without deeper knowledge and no real training or understanding for/of the job.
Therefore they do sell and advertise, what they know or what is new and advertised to them.

Most likely FP will be on neither list.

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Such training might occur, but the trained person has to stay up-to-date. Fairphone benefits in spirit, too, that they team up with Vodafone: it shows they’re taken seriously. My take is that it is going to take some time for this to take off.

No branding from any carrier AFAIK.

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Would I still be eligible for the €40 cashback if I took out a Fairphone 3 contract with Vodafone?

It’s only valid if you buy from Fairphone’s own webshop, see section 2 here:

By the way, everyone, the cashback promotion expires at the end of this month (March 2020)!

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