Is support frustratingly slow for anyone else?

General Topics
1

Last Thursday, my Framework 13 developed display issues. A large, vertical, black bar. Then horizontal black lines. They are present during POST, not present on external video, and change when pressure is applied. In other words, a clear hardware failure. It is under warranty.

The process on this has been frustrating and marked by a distinct lack of urgency on the Framework side. I emailed them Thursday morning, including photos and videos. About 12 hours later, they replied asking me to take more photos (with the bezel removed for some reason). They asked me to reseat the display cable (OK, that’s reasonable) and take a photo of the cable. Fine, but I had to wait 12 hours for them to ask me to do this. It arrived late in the evening.

So I replied first thing the next morning with the requested info. They then said they would “escalate”.

On day 3, they said that yes, there is a need to replace the display. They asked for my name and address. Provided. Late that evening, they said they “escalated my ticket for replacement processing.”

Here we are on day 5 and still nothing.

If I could have called them, I could have done these steps in 15 minutes. Because of the slow replies and asking for things one piece at a time, it took 3 days just to get them to agree to replace the display… and I’m still waiting for the replacement to ship, with no idea how soon that would be.

I’m a big fan of the Framework approach, but the idea that problems can be fixed quickly by making the laptop user-serviceable is really negated if Framework doesn’t offer responsive support. At best, I figure I will have 8-10 days of no use of this laptop, and that’s assuming they actually ship out the part tomorrow.

This is worse than the alternative.

I also seem to experience higher than typical hardware failure rates. I’ve already had a swollen battery, keyboard with failing keys, and now a display gone bad. I treat my laptops well. My family has two Framework 13s and both of them look pristine.

I’ve been a huge fan of Framework and have been willing to overlook some of the failures. But when support is set up in such a way that it takes 3 days just for them to confirm the obvious diagnosis, and then an unknown quantity of additional days to ship out the part, this is concerning even to me.

You can’t sell a premium device aimed at a premium market and then have support take so long on even simple, obvious situations.

2

Sorry to hear that you found the support process lengthy. To give you some context on what might have happened (just my assumptions—I haven’t checked the ticket and I’m not part of the support team):

You contacted the team on Thursday morning, and they replied within 12 hours (which is within their usual response time of one business day).

They asked you to provide pictures without the bezel. If there was any damage, it wouldn’t be covered under warranty. If you hadn’t provided pictures initially, it makes sense that they requested them.

Re-seating the display cables is also a standard troubleshooting step since, in some cases, it resolves the issue without needing a part replacement.

Once they confirmed the issue wasn’t due to physical damage and re-seating the cable didn’t help, the ticket was likely escalated to a higher-tier agent. That agent probably reviewed your case, approved the part replacement, and requested your address and other details (since they need confirmation before shipping replacement parts, in case you’ve moved).

After you provided the necessary details, your case was likely sent to the RMA team to process the part order. I’m guessing the final delay happened because of the weekend.

Hope this all makes sense. From my perspective, I can see why the process took some time, but I also understand why you’re frustrated. The part replacement should be shipped soon—you’re almost there!

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3

And indeed, shortly after posting this note, I got confirmation it will ship. So I expect it to ship out tomorrow and then we’ll see how long it takes to get here.

I can see the logic about the steps. As I indicated, it’s reasonable to ask me to try to reseat the display cable, etc. But when basically not less than a day passes between each step (I don’t know where support is), it drags out what should take a few minutes into many days. It would have been reasonable for the part to go out Thursday or even Friday… Sigh. It would also have made sense to ask everything at once, to minimize lengthy roundtrips.

4

Maybe it would be more streamlined to ask the consumer to include their address just at the start, when they open the ticket? Other than being a minor privacy issue in case shipping a replacement part isn’t needed, I don’t see a major downside to that, and it would get rid of a message ping pong.

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5

What they need is an “RMA store” system where a customer can finalize a support generated RMA order. This would eliminate a lot of the “back and forth” with support and would go a long way to correctly setting expectations.

General process: Support creates RMA order on behalf of customer → Preliminary RMA information sent to parts warehouse for staging → Customer receives notification that RMA order is available for processing → Customer logs into RMA store → Customer finalizes RMA order with address and any other necessary information → Customer submits order to parts warehouse for fulfillment and main order management system for tracking → Customer receives estimated delivery time as part of the order confirmation process

6

I definitely see how that would work and it would be great for the customers but honestly, it looks like a lot of engineering work.

7

Is a little work an obstacle for customer service? Workflow or Business Process Management software would make quick work of it.

8

Framework is a company of 65 people globally, with systems that are quite complicated, many of which cannot be changed in any significant way because of how they interact with partners’ and vendors’ systems. Given unlimited resources, I’m sure they would do anything in their power to improve the customer experience, but what you’re describing as “a little work” would be a significant engineering effort, and they just don’t have the resources for that right now, with all the other work they need to do.

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9

What I’d like to see is less of an engineering solution and more of a human one. Making a tighter loop on responses is a start. chat or phone support would be even more ideal, but I understand those start to get into more money. I don’t know if they need people in a US timezone, or just more people, or what… but that would definitely help!

10

If you have a giant corporation with millions of devices in use, providing phone and chat support might be feasible. However, it is definitely not practical for Framework at this point.

The majority of troubleshooting steps take considerable time and cannot be completed during a phone or chat session. While certain tasks, like order modifications, could be handled via chat or phone, setting up the necessary systems and infrastructure is not worth the effort.

Considering factors such as breaks, sick leave, PTO, holidays, and coverage for different time zones, offering phone or chat support would require a large team and a significant support operation, something that doesn’t align with the current support volume.

(This is not an official Framework support statement, just my perspective as a professional with years of tech support experience.)

That being said, I completely agree with you on one point—we can definitely improve the “human” factor in our responses, and we’ve been working on that! :slight_smile:

Improving internal escalation processes, bringing in more agents, and providing them with feedback are just some of the ongoing steps in our journey. Every piece of customer feedback helps us improve along the way! :slight_smile:

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11

Let me preface this by saying, I agree the pace of support can be really, really slow. I have had a few issues with my Framework 16 and have had to go through support muItiple times. In fact, I am currently in the support process with a support ticket that is thirty-nine emails deep (including the escalations) which I started near the end of Febuary regarding graphical artifacting that I have been experiencing on my FW16. To be fair, it has been a surprisingly difficult issue to diagnose and pin to a single part, and they have tried to ship a mainboard replacement as the issue was believed to be in the iGPU; however this quite surprisingly didn’t work (given all the symptoms, I would have bet money on that being the cuplrit). Nonetheless, after over a month of graphical artifacts, I too am somewhat tired of this process at this point and the last couple weeks in particular have felt dreadfully slow.

However, I also understand their team is small, and, like you said, Framework devices have a somewhat high rate over time of having faulty parts. I don’t know the exact volume of computers they have shipped out in the last year that are within the warranty window, but I imagine it is quite tight on a team their size to diagnose presumable so many tickets. And that’s not to mention the fact that if they replaced every seemingly broken part without thoroughly diagnosing the issue to a single part then a) they would risk replacing the wrong parts, delaying the support process even further, and/or b) needlessly replace non-broken parts costing a sizable amount of money on their end.

In my case, the mainboard replacement naturally cost me nothing. But this means they now have a mainboard they likely can’t use in any new laptops leaving it to the refurbishment process or a loot box if their unsure of its functionallity. In small quantities this wouldn’t set Framework as a company back to much, but if they risked replacing functional parts willy-nilly, a company their size could very well feel the financial weight.

So, yes I agree the slow support process is somewhat grating, but I’m willing to give them some sizable leeway personally due to the practical aspects of running a small business in a very competitive market so long as the support, slow as it may be, is effective in resolving issue by the time the ticket is closed, which in my experience, it has been (pending the final outcome of my current ticket). Of course, others may feel otherwise, but that’s personal take.

TLDR; Yes, support can be very, very slow which I myself have experienced, but there are also practical aspects of running a small business, so I’m willing to give some leeway, but others may feel different.

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12

I will try to make a “third” and “fourth” observer problem-solving exercise here:

  • as a third observer I can put myself in the situation of the customer and agree he did everything right so it feels like the customer is rightfully annoyed
  • as a third observer I can put myself in the situation of frame.work and also agree that they did what they could given the situation, and handled it as best as possible
  • as a fourth observer not taking any sides and observing the third observer, it feels like neither is wrong, neither make a mistake, so maybe the system in place and the initial premises were not good enough to be ready for such a situation
  • as a fourth observer I see a situation that ideally needs quick action but so far has no one having mentioned a solution; someone mentioned setting up an RMA but that takes time; someone else mentioned better-faster communication from both sides, but without that being part of the support process then it’s hard to do that reliably and predictably

Possible steps toward a quick solution:

  • Frame.work could publish the escalation procedure, with a typical timeline for each escalation. In other words, let the customers know how the support process works so that they can decide how much work they want to do in advance (troubleshooting, taking/sending photos and videos) in order to expedite the process.

Personally, I like what Framework is doing, I want to support them and I want a new laptop, but I am always unsure and have second thoughts, and this thread kind of confirms that Framework still needs the customer to bring something extra compared to others (eg, with enough money one can buy/have double parts until the reliability or the support improves; or with enough time, maybe improve my backups and decentralize my use of the laptop more, so that if something happens it doesn’t block me too much)
It sounds like Framework is not as ready as it seems, I wonder if they are bending to pressure from somewhere (investors?), expanding so much with the desktop and the 12 before consolidating what they have.

13

I want to begin by saying I’m a huge fan of Framework and what they’re doing. I’ve been a Debian GNU/Linux developer for 30 years and when I got my first Framework in 2023, I wrote a blog post: For the First Time In Years, I’m Excited By My Computer Purchase.

That post linked to a couple of articles by Cory Doctorow, including one about how quickly Framework shipped him a replacement screen after he broke his.

In fact, my Framework laptop replaced both a desktop and a laptop. And then we also got a Framework 13 for my son, who is about to start college.

The repairability and upgradability have been key points for me.

Also, I treat my electronic devices very well. They typically last me many years. I have had hardware issues in the past, a few years apart, and have found that onsite repair from Lenovo and Dell to be rather poor; both laptops had minor issues that, due to tech-induced damage, led to the need to replace a mainboard at a depot. Yikes. Still, 2 repairs over a couple of decades of using laptops isn’t bad.

Framework has needed more repair. Between these two laptops, I’ve experienced: swelling battery at a surprisingly young age (separate thread on that one), bad keys on the keyboard, and this display issue.

If I get the problem resolved quickly, I don’t mind. I’ll cut them some slack; they are doing something innovative and I’m willing to deal with that. The keyboard failure was out of warranty, so I just bought the needed part and replaced it. Shipping could have been faster, but otherwise it was fine.

My laptop is extremely important. It’s where I manage my finances, how I communicate with people, etc. So the idea of “I can fix it myself” is fantastic.

I am happy to work with the limitations of a small company in order to support a small company, and get all the benefits I get (such as having a laptop with 64GB of RAM at waaay lower cost than the competition). So cutting them some slack is a given.

Let me tell you what just happened this week. We received the display replacement for the initial problem, which resolved it. We followed their guide, but now the bezel has a gap on the bottom (probably due to the adhesive used there, sigh.) I sent them a photo of it, and got a reply that they would have to escalate it. Someone else requested a couple more photos.

So the bezel is probably the cheapest part on the laptop, and couldn’t the first person have known enough to request the photos without the escalation delay? I swear, I’ve been escalated more times at this small company than Microsoft.

I name that support teams have to deal with a wide variety of experience among users. For some, they probably have to weed out software issues first. I had done that work for them when making the ticket (particularly noting the OG display issue existed during POST also).

What I’d like to see is a structure that introduces fewer lengthy roundtrips. There should be a webpage on every common problem that says “if you want to jumpstart things, here are the pieces of information we may ask for; send them all along.” Every tech that answers emails should be able to do that as well. It should save both Framework and the customer time.

It seems to me that somebody at Framework could spend a couple of hours, think about where there are excessive roundtrips and escalations, and streamline procedures to reduce both.

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14

I can definately agree with this much. The roundtrips can be especially draining. I’ve had a few times where the current support personal doesn’t seem to have all the info or pictures previously sent and so ask for previously addressed degbugging steps. And the ability to do more troubleshooting in one feil swoop during the support process and minimize the back and forth would be much appreciated.

15

Definitely. I’ve had two chains with support, with both I sent them pictures, and then they asked for pictures again without any context what was wrong with the first pictures and what they really need to see more clearly. After I sent them pictures again they got a little more specific about what pictures they really wanted.

Note that they wanted pictures from the inside, so I also had to disassemble and assemble the laptop every time to take pictures.

They should’ve just been clear about what pictures they needed from the start or what was wrong with the first pictures I sent them.

(I however suspect that the support person just didn’t read the previous messages properly. There was also some confusion and miscommunication that could’ve been easily avoided.)