I bought a new fair phone 5 about a year ago, the battery was acting dodgy and when I checked it had swollen. I couldn’t login to my fairphone account for some reason and couldn’t access my email connected to the account without my phone.
So I figured I would just pay the money and order a new battery to get my phone working asap. That was 8 days ago, delivery was supposed to be 3-5 days. I contacted customer support 2 days ago with no reply.
I haven’t had a phone in 8 days which makes life so difficult in 2025. I can’t access my main email address and can’t even order my prescription or do online banking. I don’t know how fairphone thinks that this is acceptable at all. I’ve searched the forum to see other people saying it takes weeks to receive a reply.
And it’s so disheartening, I wanted a fairphone for years as I really support the ethos behind it and saved up for one.
I am thinking about contacting my bank to get a chargeback for fraud. But it seems that there are limited places selling batteries and are more expensive.
If you happen to have Fairphone Angels in your vicinity (community volunteers offering to help in their spare time, see angelsmap), you could ask whether they would perhaps be able to help out with a battery temporarily.
Perhaps somebody could have a local hint if we knew roughly where you are situated.
Hello
sorry to hear about your experience, it must be frustrating.
On your purchase, I believe you have bought as a guest so it is not linked to your account, would that be correct? Have you received any confirmation/tracking number or alike?
If it has been shipped, I don’t think IMHO it makes sense to cancel the order (delays are arguably hardly a fraud) and order it from someplace else.
Finally, it is great that you stopped using a phone with a swollen battery. I can only imagine how difficult it might be as I am also very reliant on my FP5 for daily tasks. However, the more I read the forum, the more I realise it is crucial to have back up for situations like this. Or store spare parts in a drawer but I am not there yet;-)
You could try the online chat tomorrow and (if given the number) tracking website (but it might be limited to repairs atm)
Thanks for the reply. Yeah I bought it as a guest as I already have an account with my main email address that I don’t have access to and I didn’t want to confuse things. But yeah I do have a tracking number and I did ask the AI chat which was able to tell me that my order has not yet been dispatched. I will take your advice and use the live chat when it is open tomorrow, it is just unfortunate that there is just a 2 hour window.
you are so right about having back up options. I do have a very old phone but for some reason it’s not registering my sim card, maybe I’ll have a tinker about again. I think the main problem is losing access to my main email address, I have had it hacked before so it has quite tight security and I don’t think that I realised that all the back up options included having use of my phone.
I suppose I am just nervous about if the battery will even be sent. I think all of this could have been avoided with better communication. If they are having staffing problems they could adjust their estimated delivery times or send everyone who has ordered a generic email explaining the situation. But having zero communication is not acceptable.