✏ The Forum Guide to... Fairphone Support

This guide is a wiki, you are free to edit/update it using the :pencil2: icon in the bottom right corner of this post.


:sunny: First things first: here is the fastest and best way to contact support:

  • Send a request to support
  • Please fill in the required fields for case to be handled faster
  • If you didn’t buy the device directly from Fairphone provide proof of purchase in your request
  • Write down your ticket number
  • Only use one email address when mailing
  • Fill in as much data as possible, then support won’t have to ask for it
  • Don’t submit multiple requests, it won’t make support answer faster

For more tips scroll down to Contacting Support.

Fairphone Support and the forum

The Fairphone customer support pages can be found here. This is where all the official announcements, guides and tutorials can be found. To avoid any confusion, note that:

  • Fairphone does not see the forum as an official support channel (but rather as a place for discussion amongst Fairphone owners and/or people interested in Fairphone).
  • Fairphone staff do occasionally show up on the forum, but as they’re a small and busy group it is unlikely/impossible that they will read everything that’s going on.
  • The community moderators are not Fairphone staff.

In this forum guide you can find a summary of different aspects of support that are frequently brought up in discussions on the forum; broadly speaking:

  • The long waiting times for support
  • Tips when contacting support
  • Support outside of Europe

Long waiting times

Fairphone support response times have varied over time. There were very long delays in support requests being answered over the course of 2016, which were solved mid-November 2016. However, waiting times spiralled again mid 2017. Updates by Fairphone staff on the status of support can occasionally be found here (see the post marked as ‘solution’). If you have not heard back after the indicated time, be sure to check spam folders etc. If you are in hurry, consider calling support (see below)
Update 2022: Response times can be a bit long currently. Nevertheless, it is hard for them to give an exact time as it varies depending on the requests, on the importance, on whether they are known problems or not. Therefore, no updates will be provided in the aforementioned topic anymore.

Delays to support and the impact on returns within the 14 day cooling-off period / warranty period / etc.

In case delays do occur to your support ticket - there’s no need to panic, just let support know you have an issue within the relevant period of time. As long as you submitted your support ticket within the 14 days period or within the warranty period, Fairphone will proceed with the necessary steps.
For example, in the case of returns for a refund in the first two weeks after you received the phone: It’s sufficient to notify them that you want to return the phone for a refund within those two weeks. Whilst we’re on this subject: the 14 days cooling-off period is for you to decide whether you’re happy with your purchase - it is not the same thing as warranty (which runs for longer). There is a special procedure if the phone doesn’t work when you receive it (dead on arrival; DOA), in which case a 14 day period to report it also applies, but your right to a repair lasts longer (see also the returns policy).
In general: The phone does not need to be back at Fairphone within the relevant notification period. Wait for instructions from support on how to return the phone - don’t ship it in any other way as it will take longer (and you may run unnecessary risks and/or unnecessarily bear costs during transit).

Helping out

Whilst a busy support department isn't the fault of us owners, here is what you can do to help:
  • If there’s nothing useful on the official support pages, search the forum before contacting support to see if there’s a simple solution for your problem that you feel comfortable in trying. Create a new topic if there is no relevant topic. This may help you get going sooner as well as help others who run into the same problem later.
  • Help others on the forum: Help people troubleshoot or suggest a solution to their problem. If people are lost (the search function of the forum software Discourse isn’t the easiest to work with) and you know the answer is already out there, point people in the right direction.
  • You can help support by writing guides. There’s some suggested topics, along with a couple of tips, here.
  • If you do need to contact support, help them help you by following the tips in the section below.

Contacting support

There are two ways of contacting support, but the fastest way is combining the two as explained on the top of this post.

  • Submitting a ticket (tips below; always check whether you received an automated response with your ticket number).
  • Calling them. Opening times are 10:00-17:00 CEST Monday to Friday. Recommended for urgent queries. Experiences reported here on the forum indicate that they speak a range of languages. Support appears to have made improvements to call handling, and are implementing a language choice option. Local access numbers are also available for a number of countries.

:netherlands: :calling: : +31 (0)20 788 4400 (main support number; English only )
:de: : +49 (0)69 6640 4302 (defaults to German. Update Aug 2022: die Nummer in Deutschland scheint es nicht mehr zu geben)

To make the experience as smooth as possible, here are some tips:

  • Please don’t submit multiple support requests for the same issue. It won’t speed up your answer, but it does mean that support will need to spend more time on handling pointless duplicate requests.
  • Make sure you’ve tried the troubleshooting steps in the official troubleshooting guide. Mention what you’ve tried, and what the outcome was.
  • Include as much information as possible. Often using a picture or a screenshot helps a lot. If you’ve had a discussion about the problem here on the forum, include a link to that discussion.
  • If you call them (recommended if your problem is urgent) because you think you have a hardware problem, it may help to have the following details ready:
    • Webshop order number (if applicable)
    • The serial number or IMEI1 number of the phone and, if it’s about a specific module, the module serial number (FP2, FP3 ,FP4 support articles).
  • If you haven’t opened a support ticket yet and plan on calling them, consider this approach.
  • Soon after you’ve submitted a support request via the support form, you should receive an automated response that includes a ticket number. If you can’t find it, check your spam folder. Any further responses are likely to go the same way, so consider adding Fairphone to your contacts list to avoid missing out on the actual answer to your request later.
  • If the form doesn’t appear to submit and you really didn’t receive a confirmation e-mail, e-mail the details that you put into the form to support@fairphone.com. Filling out the form is still the easiest and fastest way to get a relevant answer, so it is recommended to only do this if the form doesn’t work. There has been a rare report of an ad-blocker being incompatible with the support form, so it may be worth a shot to white list the page with the support form before resorting to e-mail.

Support outside of mainland Europe

Note that whilst returns can be arranged in some cases, Fairphone cannot ship replacements outside of Europe; see ‘Territoriality’ in the returns policy. In addition, Fairphone does not ship to a number of islands and overseas territories: see the list of shipping destination exclusions (scroll down). Consider arranging matters through contacts in Europe or finding a forwarding service that you trust (search using a term like ‘parcel forwarding service europe’).

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