I’ve been trying to get a replacement CMOS battery. I’ve gone through support three times.
The first time, they ended up saying I hadn’t provided the necessary information, and ignored subsequent responses.
The second time, I never got a response at all after submitting the support form.
The third time, they are again giving me a canned response claiming I haven’t provided the necessary information, even though I’ve provided:
My Framework Order Number
My shipping address
A picture of my mainboard
Not to mention that their canned email response is contradictory on what is needed:
Framework Support can provide a replacement RTC/CMOS battery to you, free of charge, regardless of the status of your warranty. Simply request this option and provide a clear image/photo of the serial number of your mainboard and your Framework Order Number.
… If you are requesting a replacement RTC/CMOS Battery, you need only provide the Order Number.
A CMOS battery should be cheap enough that if they just offered it on the marketplace I would purchase it there. But they don’t offer a compatible battery on the market place.
My experiences with Framework support have been quite negative. I imagine they would be improved if Framework would get a real ticketing system. Their current system offers no traceability outside of email, and it appears to me that they don’t ever look at the history of your support request.
It’s also annoying that they want you to submit a picture, but their support form doesn’t accept pictures.
I’m not the only one who has experienced issues like this when communicating with Framework support:
Framework needs to invest in a simple ticketing system where both they and we can see our support requests with history and current status when we login to our framework account. That system should also give as a trackable case number to which we can attach requested info such as photos. That would go a long way to mitigating some of these frustrations.
Assume English is not their first language. So, I don’t use complex sentences. Use nice short sentences.
Keep it as short as I can. It has been proven that people reading emails only actually read/process about 50% of them and make assumptions about the rest. So, if one keeps the email short it is less to read and maybe get read more than 50%.
For me, you are lucky if I read more than 5 lines of an email, if I am busy.
I checked your support tickets and I see that our support agents accidentally requested the picture with the serial number twice, apologies about that.
I definitely understand why they got confused with your ticket though, I see that you contacted us last June for this request, and for some reason (can be email service provider or the system we use for support tickets) we could not send you emails for a while but we were able to send an email June 29th, requesting your address but never got a reply from you. I see that you mentioned that this is your third attempt, I was able to find the OG ticket from last year as I mentioned but could not locate the second one. Reviewing the two tickets I was able to find, I did not see the “refusing to replace” part, was that in the second email chain?
Either way, I see that we shipped you the battery a few hours ago, please let us know if you have any issues with the replacement process.
Yes, I see the battery shipment now under my frame.work orders page. That part works well.
When I used the word “refuse”, it was not that I got response that said they were refusing my request, it was simply that after providing the requested information, I got the canned email (on more than one occasion) that said I had not provided the information, and then my subsequent responses were ignored (from my perspective). From what you are saying, it sounds like my second request form simply got lost in the ether. If our support requests were actually trackable, I could have seen that.
There is also still the matter of contradicting requirements for battery replacement. On the one hand it says “If you are requesting a replacement RTC/CMOS Battery, you need only provide the Order Number.” On the other hand it says “request this option and provide a clear image/photo of the serial number of your mainboard and your Framework Order Number” Support is pretty clearly looking at the 3 point requirement instead of the one point requirement. So the battery replacement guidelines themselves are confusing for both customers and support.
I realize at this point that there probably aren’t a ton of RTC battery replacement requests, but honestly, I’d rather have the option to just purchase it from the marketplace than have to go through support to get it.
And I still contend that with a better support tracking system confusion and frustration could be reduced for both customers and support personnel.
Thank you for the feedback, I’ll check with our support team to see if we are using contradicting canned responses, but my assumption is that order number is requested by the team to understand which model of device you have and the serial number picture is needed for the actual replacement. Since your case is a bit complicated than that (and support agents were cross checking data from your 10 month old case) I’m assuming the order or emails were not right. I’ll share that feedback with the support team and also ask if we’re planning to bring the battery to the marketplace. Thank you!
I believe it’s supposed to be either / or. Order number, or email that tied to order number or photos of the Mainboard serial number. This being due to Framework supplying a CMOS battery replacement regardless of warranty, and regardless of whether it was bought new or used. If bought used, you would not normally have the original order number, and you may no longer even have contact with the seller, presuming they would even be willing to find the order number for you. Similar to the procedure for the CMOS / RTC battery replacement module, which is outlined on Framework’s github.
If you have an 11th Gen system or Mainboard, you can now reach out to support to request a free RTC Battery Substitute module. To make the request process go smoothly, enter the email address that you ordered the 11th Gen product on and/or include photos of the system and Mainboard serial numbers.
Note that there are no constraints making this request other than being an 11th Gen system or Mainboard owner (whether or not you are in warranty). We ask that you really make sure you are comfortable with performing soldering on expensive electronics items before performing the installation, as we won’t be able to provide advice or support around soldering or provide fixes for failed soldering attempts. We also ask that you only make the request if you’ve faced needing to perform a Mainboard reset, as we want to avoid waste.
Commit history for the text (the readme.md file) says upload and edits are by Nrp.
Regarding the RTC battery rework (as opposed to the CMOS battery replacement), if anyone is wondering…the RTC battery rework solution has been working rather well. Might want to look into that instead of perpetually needing CMOS battery replacement down the road.