Wow.

Framework, with a customer that wanted to pay for one of these laptops, returned with this poorly spell-checked info when queried:

Framework does not officially support any countries/regions other than those available for sales and shipment via Framework’s own sales pages.

After audit, any orders utilizing freight forward company addresses will be canceled ^(sic) and refunded, without exception.

Entering false billing information in an attempt to place an order with a payment method from an unsupported country/region will be automatically flagged for review and said orders are subject to cancelation ^(sic).

The prospective purchaser is a French citizen, working for a Swiss company in Geneva. Framework refused the payment from their Swiss credit card. The delivery address was chosen as this person’s parental home, where they grew up. Framework apparently don’t want sales from people that can pay for the hardware.

It also appears that Framework would do everything possible to nullify the warranty and after-sales service if a laptop owner bought a product and then brings that product to a country or region not specifically covered by their listed sales regions - even on a holiday it would appear.

Apart from that policy being quite illegal, it’s also very indicative of the quality of support one could expect as a customer. The relevant sales of goods acts or equivalent don’t suddenly become non-applicable when the item is transported somewhere.

Not only did Framework lose this customer, but now that my peer group is aware of the dumb sales policies and incredibly abrasive pre-sales experience, we will all go very much out of our way to ensure anybody that might be thinking about a Framework laptop should seek elsewhere. It’s just not worth dealing with that type of vendor arrogance and general stupidity anymore.

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^(Plus, any entity that fails to do a basic spell-check on any professional or commercial customer-facing communications really shouldn’t be allowed to communicate or interact with customers. It makes that entity look rather amateur and untrustworthy…)