I’m in the market for a replacement input cover as well, but it is an elective replacement, so while I would like to get one, there’s little urgency. I presume that they’ve been pulled both due to the seemingly high number of issues with the connector shorting and the batch run. Now that they’ve cleared the batches hopefully the covers will become available again.
If I were in your shoes I would escalate with Support, as you have a broken system and need a replacement to get things back up and running. If first level support doesn’t give you the response that you are after, politely request that the ticket be escalated, and so on. People aren’t perfect, mistakes are made, things fall through the cracks. In my opinion you have a legitimate need for a replacement now rather than later, which was (again, in my opinion) not properly addressed. I know it’s a pain, but gently push for what you need, be respectful, and more often than not you will be successful.
Best of luck in getting a replacement cover. Have a good day. Hopefully you get things resolved and can cancel the Thinkpad order.
That is a really weird response, lugging and external keyboard around with your business laptop is annoying and might look bad to customers (look at this dev, doesn’t even have working equipment for the job)
Lol Obviously I meant temporarily rather than buying another $2000 laptop. That would be my preference, but of course everyone’s free to do as they please.
the OP has stated repeatedly that the problem requires the input cover assembly to be replaced and that replacing the keyboard is somehow inadequate. i’m not clear on the specifics that make that so, but taking that at face value seems reasonable.
@cmstew@eso In short, this problem arose precisely because I ordered a replacement keyboard (as Input Covers were not available). One of the screws attaching the original keyboard to the input cover was stripped, and could not be removed without cosmetic damage to the input cover.
There are some pretty big leaps in thought here which are not based in fact. We absolutely apologize for the wait in Support, and I’ve detailed the reasons for this and provided updates on multiple channels. While I understand there’s an expectation that Support responses should be much faster than they are, you must take our company size into consideration as hiring an extremely large Support team to brute force contact volume is a great way to kill a Startup and end our mission prematurely. The volumes ebb and flow, but given the uniqueness of our product, allowing customers to bring their own hardware to DIY laptops with a massive number of potential configurations and incompatibilities, multiple supported Operating Systems, and varying levels of technical prowess among the customer base, contact volumes exceed sales, with contact rates being well above 100%. We also shipped 11 Batches of Framework Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series), back to back, in increasing frequency, leading to overlapping batches, in order to ship as much as possible before the holiday season. This doesn’t take into account that we are also still very much supporting Framework Laptop 13 (11th Gen Intel Core), Framework Laptop 13 (12th Gen Intel Core), Framework Laptop 13 Chromebook Edition, Framework Laptop 13 (13th Gen Intel Core), and answering questions/modifying orders for the upcoming Framework Laptop 16, which is now entering Batch 15, leading into Q2 of 2024.
You can be frustrated about the wait times, that’s completely valid, but to make statements like, “But I am increasingly getting the impression that, in the pursuit of growth, Framework is hanging existing users out to dry” is not based in fact, is hyperbolic, and is painful for all of us to read here at Framework, working extremely long hours, and weekends in some cases, to close gaps where possible. We’ll have to continue to ask for patience while we grow our company in an intelligent way that aligns with available resourcing, the current economic climate, and our ability to sustain scaling rate without negatively impacting our position in the market or, put bluntly, our existence as a company. If anything I’ve said is unacceptable, or does not align with expectations, being absolutely candid, perhaps we aren’t the right choice at this very specific point in time. We’re in a very mature market with manufacturers that have hundreds of thousands of employees globally. We have 45, total, positioned in the United States and Taiwan. There will be an inflection point, in the future, hopefully sooner rather than later, where our scale aligns with increasing global demand, and is closer to the offerings of our industry partners. Unfortunately, this isn’t that time, and we continue to accomplish almost impossible tasks as a very small team, to show the industry that there is a better way.
Again, we’re sorry that we haven’t met your expectations, but I can’t, and won’t say that everything will magically improve, as there’s still a lot of work to do. As we’ve only existed for 3 years, there’s still a lot of growth that needs to happen.
Unless it’s mechanical, then they’ll just think you’re a bit eccentric
Reading between the lines, you (and I, since I bought a blank keyboard and then thought about selling my FW13.gen11 recently) are probably input-cover-less because the popularity of the 13th gen and AMD FW13’s have induced a bottleneck. There was an email recently that said the pre-orders for AMD FW13 are just about finished, so maybe the critical parts will come back in stock soon. (note: both the observation and analysis are mine and un-official.)
BTW I built mine out of ONLY Marketplace parts and went without a battery for like six months, so I know what setting your homepage to Marketplace feels like.
The Input Covers being pulled from the Marketplace was due to an inventory review of all available Input Covers, globally. If the lack of an Input Cover is causing a hard block for a customer, they should contact Framework Support and state the urgency. Our team will find a way to get the Input Cover to them. For non-urgent purchases, we are nearing completion of the global review and they will be back on the Marketplace shortly. We did not expect the review to take this long, and we apologize for the delay.
And this is the reason I too am putting my Framework 13 up for sale. There have been no released firmware updates for the 12th gen, and the one beta update (3.06) experienced acknowledged issues but has not seen another public beta in the ensuing 12 months. Perhaps more frustrating than the wait has been the lack of substantive status updates. Odd, because Framework has often demonstrated good transparency in other areas.
But the 12th gen BIOS thread speaks for itself. Apart from the official “we can’t give you status updates, we’ll post it when it’s ready” response, “you’re holding it wrong” (i.e. none of the CVEs and functional problems are serious enough to need an update) and “you bought from a startup - you should have no expectation of timely support” are a disturbingly frequent responses from the community.
Yes, Framework is small and is trying to follow an ethos of sustainability that you can’t get from the big companies. And for that, I was willing to pay more for a given level of performance. And for that, I’m willing to be more patient with updates. But sustainability is more than just modular hardware. I have a small stack of fully functional smartphones decommissioned because they ceased getting firmware updates. And while some may be comfortable running with 12+ months of unpatched CVEs (we’re not just talking LogoFail) and real functional defects, I’m not.
I don’t expect many to agree, and I won’t attempt to change the minds of those that don’t. I simply hope Framework will see that @ayhcheung isn’t alone and that true sustainability means dedicating resources (supply chain, service, software maintenance, etc.) to long-term post-release support, even at the expense of impacting new product launches. I hope that someday Framework will find a way to get there.
This, I’m afraid, has not been my experience. Despite stating the urgency of replacing the Input Cover, I have been told - twice - to wait for the Marketplace listings to resurface.
Please check in on the same thread again as we’ve made sure that our agents escalate, but only for urgent, blocking requests. For non-urgent requests, we continue to ask for patience while we work to bring these back to the Marketplace.
Just to close out on this specific topic, Input Covers have now returned to the Marketplace and are purchasable. Thanks for hanging in there with us while we worked to bring them back online.
@TheTwistGibber just to follow up, I received my replacement Input Cover today and my FW13 is back in working order. I also appreciate your candour in noting that “perhaps we aren’t the right choice at this very specific point in time”.
Update: Between the replacement Input Cover and the cost of an extended Lenovo support contract, I have decided to return the X1 Carbon. This was not an easy decision to make, given my experiences thus far; nonetheless, given the explanation of the Input Cover shortage and FW’s current situation from @TheTwistGibber, I am cautiously optimistic that things will improve.
