Yeah, I just posed the question back at Support to ask their Engineering if the EC Flash has been fixing the laptops being returned with this issue. Being in Canada, shipping/customs is both a pain and an extra cost… so I would be open to trying that route if they’ve had success with it… and spend the $30 on the toolset.
I would need to also know that it is possible to install PureOS on a Linux VM, in order to plug the CH341A chip programmer USB into for downloading/installing the software… since I don’t have a second Librem/Linux laptop.