Frustratingly unintelligent behaviour from support

Dear all

My new Framework 13 had a two - or three - problems:

  1. a key that always made a nasty scratchy-sound and which stopped working entirely after a while;
  2. a bezel in which the covers for respectively the camera and the microphone rattled.

In response to 1, the support people (henceforth ‘Support’) sent me a new ‘input cover’. Even before I attached it, I could tell that the same key had the same scratchiness as it had on my previous keyboard In response to 2, Support send me a new bevel. That too - and even before it was attached - seemed to rattle.

None of that is the unintelligent part. The unintelligent - and frustrating (or more frustrating) - part (which, to end this echo of Douglas Adams, I would not call ‘a good bit’) is as follows. I have asked Support, more than once, to ensure that any new input cover be from a different batch to the previous ones that I have had. Support refuses to engage with that point. More: Support seems to say that the rattle - which admittedly is slight, unless one really shakes the bevel - is normal and unproblematic. Yet, in the same breath, Support offers . . to send me another - a third - bevel. My request for explanation - is the rattle normal? If so, why send me a new one - fall on deaf ears.

All of this takes time, is rude, and is frustrating. Also, I want, you know, a keyboard that does not have a distractingly-funny sounding - and nasty feeling - key, and, at least ideally, a non-rattly bevel. Oh, and, increasingly, Support is taking, sometimes, a week to send me its (non-)replies. It was in large point to avoid this sort of quasi-Kafkaesque nonsense that I dumped Lenovo in favour of Framework.

TLDR: I’ve two hardware problems; I’m being sent new parts that have the same problems and my calls for explanation are ignored.

I wonder if L1(?) Support has been somewhat outsourced…and they’re just running by the script…and don’t care about the cost of replacement parts / shipping / time / business. Like are these people (?) just billing Framework for the support cases…and so they don’t have skin in the game? (i.e. It’s not their company)

They may not have the option to fulfill your request. The distribution centers may have no means to ensure a particular item is from a different batch.

This could be a reason as to why your bezels are all coming from the same batch & have similar cam and mic cover. Quality control at the factory judged them to be within acceptable tolerance. And it might even be the only batch they have at the moment.

They are simply trying to make a customer happy, within the best of their ability, using the options that are available to them.

They may not be sure if there is an actual problem with the bezels, in which case they hope you get a better one, by chance. Or whether you’re just very particular, in which case, they are still hoping the next bezel might be better.

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@Second_Coming, @MJ1: thank you for your replies.

@MJ1, specifically - two points. (i) Being unable to fulfil my request seems insufficient justification for repeatedly ignoring that request. (ii) ‘They are simply trying to make a customer happy, within the best of their ability, using the options that are available to them.’ Perhaps. It is a poor situation though if they cannot avoid ignoring my points and cannot avoid seeming to contradict themselves.

There has been the following development. After I had sent a couple more emails, in which I pushed politely but firmly, and with complain, for explanation, I got an explanation. I hope that it is sincere. The explanation was as follows. I would have preferred not to quote the support person directly, even though that person was unnamed and perhaps the text at issue is ‘boilerplate’. Yet, I found the text hard to paraphrase. So direct quotation it is.

[W]e are implementing enhanced quality control measures for all products, ensuring that each item is inspected more rigorously before shipment. In addition, our team is conducting a comprehensive analysis to identify the underlying causes of the previous issues. This will help us address any design or manufacturing flaws. And finally, we are establishing a feedback loop with our production team to quickly address any anomalies or customer reports (just like what you have encountered), allowing for immediate corrective actions.

I suspect that I may well get a third defective keyboard and a third defective bezel. Or, if the bezel is not defective, in the sense that all the bezels are like the ones I have had, then they should tell me so. I wouldn’t even mind that much. It has been the keyboard that I have been most concerned about.

Videos of the keyboard key scratching and the bezel rattling would be great.

I find it odd that two input covers would have the exact same key scratching. I am also at a loss for how the bezel rattles given the way it is constructed.

I think a video, if you have the time and inclination, would really help to highlight these issues.

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I can’t see how, if I were Framework, I would have entertained the support request without a video.

Sending replacements just on the say so of a customer seems ‘scratchy’