Infuriating support experience (rant)

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Yesterday I ordered a Framework 12 for my sister as gift for college assuming it would be the perfect device as my 13 was when I started college. I didn’t really think much about the decision because I liked my 13 so much and had yet to hear about how poorly built the 12 is. Now, my sister has in the past beat the life out of her devices, which again is why I though a repairable plastic laptop would be perfect, but there is no way a 12’s flimsy chassis holds up in her hands. During checkout I had to add my parents address to my account, but after clicking “billing address same as shipping” and next I realized it would not be the same address and had to press back and provide the appropriate billing address. Well apparently pressing back reset the shipping address to my old college dorm I haven’t lived for well over a year on the other side of the state.

A few hours after the order I was pretty excited and decided to watched some reviews while getting ready for bed and was frankly horrified by the poor quality chassis of the 12. I knew price to performance was terrible, as it always has been with framework but the build quality was what set me over the edge. I figured since it had only been a matter of hours since I placed the order that canceling would be no trouble. I opened a ticket to cancel the order and started looking at different devices.

Well after some more fretting I was looking at the order again and finally noticed the shipping address was my old dorm mail box, so I attached a reply to the initial request asking for at the very least the address to be updated to either my apartment or my parents house so I didn’t have to drive across my state (in the winter) to meet my return window.

Today I got a reply from support saying:

Thank you for reaching out to Framework Support. We sincerely apologize for the delay in our response, as we are currently handling a high volume of tickets. We appreciate your patience and are here to assist you.

Upon checking, your order number ——————-, we captured the full payment on November 26, 2025. Since the full payment has been captured, the order has been locked and can no longer be modified or canceled.
The order has been sent to the fulfillment center for shipment and should ship out within five business days upon capturing the payment.

Once your order has been shipped, you will receive an email confirmation along with the tracking number. This will allow you to monitor the delivery progress.

I read the first bit of the email which stated that the shipment cannot be cancelled OR MODIFIED. And sent a prompt reply thanking them for being of no help.

After that I noticed this annoying part hidden far at the bottom of the email:

For us to update the shipping address and to ensure smooth delivery, could you please also provide us with your updated phone number?

After telling me the order could no longer be modified, to me changing the shipping address falls completely under modifying the order, they ask me for an updated phone number? Keep in mind I had already provided two addresses that would work as shipping alternatives, and they asked for a phone number that has not changed since I was in the fourth grade.

This prompted me to reply again, a little more than slightly annoyed which included my address and the phone number I got with my first ever phone and a paragraph stating my frustration. I am still unbelievably annoyed. I am seriously considering selling my 13 on ebay for next to nothing and buying myself something else alongside a device for my sister, despite the fact I don’t have a lot of money since I am still in school (different school from the original shipping address). I am willing to dump what money I have saved up on principle of ensuring I am fully away from this company and their terrible service.

I am writing this to warn potential first time buyers of the terrible support I received, which is unfortunate because I have thoroughly enjoyed my 13 and was planning on getting some serious upgrades for grad school next year.

Apparently now my ticket has been escalated and the frustration has been sincerely apologized for. Assuming this post is not promptly deleted I will update this post appropriately.

Immediate update:

So apparently an order that cant be modified or canceled can be modified, but we already established that. I just got an email that said the order has been canceled just like that. Apparently it takes nasty emails to get help from this company. I am only more angry now that its cancelled simply because it always could have been cancelled in the first place. At the very least I will be getting my money back in the end. Someone please make it make sense.

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I don’t know what videos you watched, but a user on this forum torture tested his FW 12s and they did quite well. My own FW 12 (batch 1) has no cracks and zero issues. This is of course ancedotal but I feel like as with most things in life you will hear the negative disproportionately more than the positive. So by providing a counter point I am just indicating that I have not had issues.

Framework, as a small company, is dealing with an inordinate amount of fraud. I sympathize with your frustrations, but also understand that Framework has to take these things seriously.

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If that’s really true that first support denies canceling orders outright, but then some orders are actually cancelable on closer inspection, maybe there is/could be a like a secret word or some kind of key phrase we could mention to support to ask for cancellation consideration immediately?

Because I hate being obnoxious and it would be unfortunate if that’d be the only way to cancel the order…

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It sounds like the first part of the message was some kind of automatic response that may have been referring to the fact that you could no longer modify or cancel your order (otherwise, the automated response may have explained where you could make those changes yourself after logging into your account). And then the support person wrote manually about replying with your phone number so they could modify the order for you.

It sounds like a situation where they need to either reword that initial, generic part of the message, or just get rid of it. Sounds a bit confusing and frustrating. It’s unfortunate, but I’m sure they don’t mean to be intentionally misleading. Any time I’ve needed to modify an order, they were always willing to help.

As for the quality issues, there have definitely been some issues, and some folks have dealt with more than others. The chassis cracking issue is especially unfortunate, but Framework is coming out with an updated plastic formulation, and they are actually going to replace the bottom case on both of my machines, including the one that I threw at the pavement multiple times when testing how well the plastic would hold up, lol. I’m the guy mentioned above who torture tested a FW 12. I didn’t quite throw it at the pavement, but I did slide it off a table onto pavement multiple times in different ways to see how it would hold up. Other than some gouges to the rubber bumpers on the edges and a few light scuffs, it held up perfectly well. I still use it now, months later, with zero issues.

I’m not trying to talk you into ordering one. You have to do what works for you. But despite the cracks (which seems to be developing from the constant pressure/stress around various screws and such), I feel like the plastic chassis holds up pretty well to abuse. Hopefully, the revised case doesn’t develop those cracks.

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First, thank you for the reply. I was in a bit of a mood when I wrote this.

I don’t know what videos you watched

Framework, as a small company, is dealing with an inordinate amount of fraud.

Not really sure how my situation would apply to possible fraud, the shipping address was reset to an old one while all other order details were kept the same. It seems more of a frustrating oversight than anti fraud mechanism. In the end the fault is mine for not double checking.

but a user on this forum torture tested his FW 12s and they did quite well.

I am sure that if I had purchased the 12 for myself I would not be worried about it holding up. But this was intended to be a gift for someone who historically has killed every laptop they ever owned in some critical way within a year. Seeing the defects in the reviewers unit really made me nervous. Besides, I had assumed that 12 would have come with expansion cards like my 13 did and that I could reuse the storage from my 13 which I was going to upgrade, after finding that out I was disheartened to see an addition ~$200 cost to the device (including 60w charger and assortment of expansion cards). At that price you could get a prebuilt 13, only I know first hand the 13 is not a device to drop.

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Yeah, I do not enjoy being mean to support agents. Its sad to say that they seem to respond well to threats of not doing further business with the company. I really hope they get their support staff in order because I do love my 13 and would like to upgrade it soon.

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The initial email was definitely a copy pasted standard response.

Funnily enough the order page instructed me to open a ticket in order to modify / cancel the order. I am not sure about what eCommerce service they use but it seems like this was a stop gap solution to a technical limitation regarding customers altering their own orders.

100% agree.

I am glad you are happy with your devices, and as I said in another reply I probably would have been just fine if I bought the device for myself. Personally I would have loved a 2 in 1 version of the 13 with the aluminum body, and felt let down by the 12 upon reveal only to revisit it when considering laptops for a new student. Maybe this is a gift I come back to once the 12 has matured more, assuming the tablet I plan to gift in the original 12’s wake survives long enough.

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Or it is your fault for not deleting a defunct address from your account before ordering.

Yeah, but when something is in warehouse stock ready to ship the payment goes through and a notification is sent to the warehouse to ship. The order is not sitting around for a couple of days. If you were able to dig behind the scenes I think you would find that there has been a fair bit of emailing/telephoning and other communications to get your order cancelled.

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Well that is not very helpful. As a student I move a lot, and usually making sure my internet and power are set to the right address usually takes precedent over making sure my premium repairable laptop provider has the latest address. I don’t think its reasonable to assume that setting a separate billing address would update the shipping address to an old default when you had already specified a new address. Overall your comment is snarky and not helpful.

That’s not a defense, just a bad system. An eCommerce platform that requires that much manual effort to do something as basic and common as a cancelled order, especially with devices costing $500+. It is in the best interest of framework to work towards a better system for handling online orders, it would have saved every party grief. Either they have a bad system for cancellation, or orders shouldn’t be allowed to be cancelled at all.

Overall you come across as condescending and uninterested in any genuine conversation revolving around framework’s practices. For your own sake you should reconsider your blind brand loyalty, that is the kind of thinking that made most consumer laptops as bad as they are.

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No, I’m just attempting to help you understand the behind-the scenes systems that many companies run when the office that you order through is half a world away from the warehouse that the item is shipped from.

Your laptop would likely be shipped from Taiwan, but they may have suitable stock in a warehouse serving your country of residence. But wherever the stock is being warehoused won’t be where the office handling the ordering and finance is.

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Well opening with a snide comment didn’t really do much to help me understand anything. The cancellation policies of companies like Amazon prove that online cancellation is a solvable issue and shouldn’t require angry emails from the customers and would never justify the contradictory email. eCommerce is not a new thing, and I am far from the first person to ever try to cancel an online order.

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I’m not really arguing with you in general. But I will point out that both of the two times I tried to cancel an Amazon order, I received an email that said that they tried to cancel the order, but the order was “shipping soon” and could not be canceled. In one case I got a email later saying my order was delayed, so I tried to cancel again. I got that same automated email response that it was “shipping soon” and so it couldn’t be canceled. It ended up not shipping until like a week later. When I tried to reach out further, I just got an automated system that went in circles and was zero help.

I’ve also dealt with other companies where as long as it hadn’t yet shipped, if I requested the order be canceled, I received an email almost immediately saying it was canceled. So I get what you’re saying. But Amazon may not be the best example.