Getting ghosted by support

Hardware Librem 5
134

Based on other stories here and elsewhere I might never see the phone, have to constantly nag for a ETA, the added costs plus for me, it already cost $1,500,.00 - for a game that was “free”. In short, Yes, I might get the device back, but it may be obsolete by then.

Maybe, the positive comments here had phones with easy fix issues and under warranty.
When I found out that that there is a another ‘support’, warranty was shot.
I’m told that if the issue is software, the costs might be free to flash the phone. A real insult.
But, if it’s hardware related, it would cost me more. So if they have the phone and want money to repair and I disagree, I pay to get it shipped back as a paperweight or they use it for parts.

What have I got to lose? 15 months of trial and error grief, $1,500.00, plus more ridiculous shipping fees that may end being wasted anyway.

I think cell makers should be mandated to use cookie-cutter replacements when consumer attempts to fix it fail. I followed all the instructions *but one. Some instructions were incorrect, but fixed leading to multiple flashing.

I did my part, and then some. Trust is earned. So is a reputation; good, or bad.
~s

  • to boot from a USB with installer. That, I might get done today.
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For me, my repairs cost five hundred and they had to replace the screen, the usb board, and the main board… everything but the frame and the radios. Yours shouldn’t be terrible

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Another hundred and you could buy a new one. Were you advised ahead of time what it would cost? Or to get it back? If you said No after knowing…!
It’s a roll of the dice what the costs will be. If I had any, I’d say they got us by the — cops at the door, gotta go by… :innocent:

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Yes I was and I chose to go with the costs

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Odd. I asked what it might cost plus if I kept the battery, and they put a new one in (for safe shipping and having a spare), approximate cost after redoing the kernel and flashing the OS
All I got was cursory lip service on a generic cut & paste with no answers to the questions.

People asking where their refund is, where their device is, and their ads and online reviews (sans their own self-reviews) has me believe they can and will get away with not answering when they don’t feel like it.
A lot of places ask for reviews. Those I’ve seen are negative. They keep adding up.

From a purely business point of view, their service or lack of it, unfulfilled promises, bad reviews, staff leaving and ads that over-rate their product says they won’t be around for long. They need pro’s to get it going and living up to their ads and promises.

Ghosting customers seeking help is a poor way to do business. And will catch up with them. I hope soon before others are dumped on the side of the road.

:ghost:ted
by Purism
@JCS @joao.azevedo @joao.azevedo

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If it works for you, it works for you - but obviously a lot of customers are having my issue.

What percentage of non-working laptops with no support replies is acceptable?

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0%. Anything else a joke.

The most frustrating thing about this situation is that, for some unknown, unspoken reason, Purism can’t just come out and be straight with everyone. If they would just publicly say something, it would go a long way towards rebuilding the trust that they’ve totally trashed through their actions (and inaction). Something truthful such as:

Hey folks, we are almost out of money, so we can barely afford to pay anyone at the moment. We apologize and we plan to do better. Meanwhile, we do have enough money to keep the forums hosted, so you can help each other out (and we can jump in at times when we make a sale).

Let’s be happy that at least these forums still work, because if they didn’t we’d all be even more in the dark than we already are.

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The support department has historically been placed in impossible situations in which they

  1. are not allowed to discuss issues that escalate to legal threats
    • Purism has responded by resolving legal matters through legal channels
  2. are only provided financial approval for refunds based on cash availability and queue prioritization
    • Purism is responding by earmarking funds in their budget for gradual refund disbursement
    • Purism is responding by, once cash allows, holding incoming funds in escrow until the order ships
  3. are not provided developer resources (for sake of argument, let’s consider developers as “tier-3 support”) in a timely manner with which to discuss complex troubleshooting
    • Purism is responding by allowing support staff to ping relevant developers, where the developer may charge time to the support ticket
  4. do not have adequate time to construct improved infrastructure (a client ticketing front-end, for example) to elegantly process customer support issues while simultaneously processing the ticket backlog
  5. have been publicly doxxed, berated, and humiliated as a result of the refund fiasco
    • Purism has responded by offering staff the option to anonymize their names or operating simply as “Purism Support”
    • Purism has responded by offering the option to escalate difficult cases to management
    • Purism is responding by working toward resolution with customers so that it never gets to this point (this is a work in progress and likely will be for a while)
  6. have been issued death threats in graphic detail
    • Purism has responded by suggesting the option to inform law enforcement
    • Purism is responding by reviewing company policy and taking actionable steps to better protect staff (in progress)

In general, support could use some grace here because in some circumstances they are not approved to say “yes” to the customer but also cannot say “no,” so the alternative is for them to say nothing. It is up to management to provide adequate resources to support in order for support to adequately do their jobs.

All of your (speaking generally to the community here) criticisms are valid. You know this. Purism knows this. And Purism is doing everything it can to do better and stay that way. It may just take some time to adjust course.

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Honestly, it sounds like Purism should go out of business. And this is based on your post which is defending Purism.

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Sure, you are certainly entitled to that opinion. It was requested that Purism be open and transparent, so that’s how I responded. If I omit accountability or actionable responses from Purism, people would state that I am making excuses on their behalf; if I include actionable responses, I risk communicating defensiveness on their behalf. These are all real concerns that are actively being addressed. In my opinion, the risk of judgement is worth the assurance that you’re not getting a sales pitch. In my opinion, this is what Purism needs to do to re-earn public trust.

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We wouldn’t want the criminals and those exhibiting subcriminal behaviour to win - noting that Purism support are having to deal with death threats and abuse.

(Edited to make clear what it was responding to and to avoid controversial language.)

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Which criminals? What are you talking about?

Which shills? I haven’t seen any shills. Are you engaging in name-calling or just being vague to such an extent that it was pointless to comment?

For ease of conversation, “shill” is defined as:

shill (noun) = an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others in the swindle.

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Are there estimates on when the refund queue will be fully resolved? e.g. Are we talking 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, or “a very very long time”???

AFAIK most companies don’t charge the credit cards until shipping has started — no need for escrow.

Purism has responded by offering the option to escalate difficult cases to management

I noticed Todd directly approved a refund when someone complained about their “defied refund” on the StartEngine page. IMO, in that conversation Todd pretended to not know that there were quite a few orders that were made with a “full refund on request” or “full refund when you are at the head of the shipping queue”. In your opinion is Todd aware that he is denying refunds to many others in that same situation?

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Making a death threat, via a telecommunications medium or via some other mechanism, is likely to be a criminal offence. (Hence why JCS mentions the possibility of referring the matter to law enforcement.) Of course that will depend on your jurisdiction. I can tell you for a fact that making a death threat via a telecommunications medium is a crime in my country. In fact the legislated threshold is much lower than “making a death threat”.

My overall point was the following sequence of events.

  1. A range of people are making the support team’s life hell - to the point that it degrades their ability to do their job.
  2. The response in this forum (the post following JCS’s) was that Purism should go out of business!

Hence my conclusion that that would be letting the criminals win.

I won’t be able to identify any specific customer as a shill (nor for that matter identify which customers have allegedly committed criminal offences), just pointing out that there is a level of behaviour that is below the threshold of criminality but which would still serve to degrade the support team’s ability to do their job.

Did you actually read points 5 and 6 from JCS’s post? Surely these aren’t things that you would defend?

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I see. Without that explanation I think your statement was too loose.

It is in the US too. FBI jurisdiction (at least if the call originated in the US … but probably generally too). It’s absolutely something that should be reported.

What behavior was displayed that could be classified as “shills” for the “mainstream duopoly”? I didn’t see any people who covertly worked for the “mainstream duopoly”. i.e. Why do you think that people who displayed outrageous behavior toward Purism Support necessarily work for the “mainstream duopoly”??? I ask because more than a few people on this forum have called me a shill for Google/Android. The word “shill” seems to be thrown around here without much understanding (or a common understanding) of the word.

I did read those points, among others. But I didn’t see you connect your comment to those points until now. And I still don’t see a connection to “shills for the mainstream duopoly”.

In regard to whether I would defend those activities: Of course not. That said, I certainly would feel free to ask people who work for Purism why they would choose to work for a company that doesn’t honor client refund requests. For example, on reddit I asked that of dos/sebdos. He answered and I accepted his answer even though I would like to imagine that I would have taken a different path.

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Actually, in a support context, which is what this topic is about, I’m not so sure that I would accept that as reasonable.

In a support context, I would look at it the other way round. We all know that the decisions on these issues are being made by senior management, not by the support person. So it is not fair to badger the support person about it.

reddit is a whole different issue. If someone chooses to participate in reddit then they get what reddit moderators allow, and if reddit becomes too much of a cesspit then someone is free to choose not to participate in reddit.

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It’s difficult to say as there are numerous variables at play here; this is something I’d like to revisit later once I have more information to share and better awareness of what financial information may be made public record.

In my opinion, Todd is fully aware of the refund queue, wants to do right with everybody, and is actively planning and juggling resources to do so.

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Thanks.

In that case, do you have any insight into Todd’s response to Joe Johnson’s refund as discussed on the StartEngine forum??? Todd gave him a refund and indicated that his case was “the exception to the rule” when it seems to be the typical case for anyone with such an order date.

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Just opinions:
“not getting a sales pitch”? Have you read the ads lately? more like snake-oil sales pitch.
Don’t get me wrong. I want Puri L5 to succeed I want to see L5 earn a top spot somewhere on the top 5

statcounter.com has published the market shares of various operating systems (desktop, mobile devices) here. Android accounts for 41.64% in December 2023, while Windows runs on 29.25% of systems. Apple can be satisfied with 17.71% for iOS and 6.57% for macOS. Linux has 1.54% market share.

IMO, it’s possible and only possible IF the phone could do most of the same things ‘they’ do as well as ‘they’ do (except for their foray into things like Google Docs, or Windows Edge) - just a phone that performs as well as, if not better than the others.
The day may come, but not soon enough.

~s

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Hello everybody, I’ve been using the L5 as my main and only mobile device for approximately two years. I had an hardware problem (sd card not working) which got fixed with an RMA, and it stopped working again after a few days. I did not want to delete all my data again and wait for another fix, so I kept it broken. Everything else went well hardware-side (except bad gps reception and slightly faulty usb-c connection which makes the use of external displays really difficult, as a slight move of the device caused video problems and charging problems in general, but I kept using it every day). However, the 18th of March the modem stopped working. I’m not sure it’s a faulty modem as I suspected a faulty hardware kill switch, so I asked the support. When I turn off the HKS (or turn the modem ON) the dmesg shows error like:

[30953.093983] usb 1-1-port2: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[30953.969893] usb 1-1-port2: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[30953.976731] usb 1-1-port2: attempt power cycle

So before ordering a 50€ modem + shipment + taxes I thought it was better to ask support for a repair center in Europe. I’d better pay for a checkup of my phone than just blindly try to replace the modem.
Joao replied that

I’m afraid we have no support in the EU at the moment

He asked for the kernel log and to remove usbguard, which did not hel, the 27th of March.

I did not have any reply from him since, despite a couple of more mail sent by me (the last one on the 6th of July). My doubt of the modem being the (only) culprit increased as one day the modem started working out of nowhere, with the HKS in a mid-position (neither fully ON nor fully OFF), but I could not replicate it since.

Do any of you knows how to proceed? I’ve not been using my L5 in the last months as not being able to use the modem it’s quite useless (I use it with an hotspot sometimes for messaging on telegram), and I’d really like to restart using it. In the meantime I also broke the glass (so I’d need to replace it), but before investing and giving other money to purism I’d like support to support me on this.

Thanks!

Edit:
I’d also add that, looking at the schematics, I guess that there are other two components which if broken could explain the modem not working

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image

My guess is either one of the two AP2281-1FMG, causing not enough current to be delivered to the modem, or the RB751G-40 Schottky, which if I’m not mistaken, if is broken (always closed) can cause mid-level voltages on the AP2281-1FMG enable pin.

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