Failure to live up to warranty

Posted Tue June 12, 2012 11:34 am, by Greg P. written to Samsung Telecommunications, USA

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I bought two phones at $189 each, both Samsung Exhibit II from Wal-Mart to get the T-Mobile month to month rates. The one Exhibit II has been fine. The other has a hardware problem, and Samsung has failed spectacularly both times we sent it for repair.

The phone's power switch is sticky, very hard to activate, and unreliable. It's a simple, very straight forward hardware problem. We described the problem to Samsung tech support, who had us send the phone in for repairs. They sent it back noting problems with the power button and "resolved" it by updating the software.

This "fix" obviously did nothing to address a hardware problem with the power button and things got worse. A few weeks later the phone overheated very badly, probably due to the faulty power button. It completely cooked the battery.

Again we contacted Samsung support and informed them of the failure to fix the faulty power button and this time the severe overheating and cooked battery. Can you guess the "fix" they performed? You guessed it, a software update.

So it was that Samsung boxed up the phone with the still obviously faulty power button, neatly wrapped up the cooked batter that cannot be charged, and sent it back with "updated" software that miraculously has been built since the last time we sent it in just weeks ago.

Samsung's support is bar none the worst I've dealt with for any consumer electronic product. It's patently obvious that they have a deliberate policy of avoiding hardware fixes. They simply update (or in the second case claim to update) the software and hope for the best.

In what universe; however, does severely overheating hardware hot enough to cook a battery the fault of software? This is undeniably a hardware problem and requires a hardware fix.

1) If a customer reports a mechanical problem with a switch or button, fix the hardware and don't pretend that a software upgrade will accomplish anything.

2) Test the product before it ships. Due to the severe overheating, we reported a cooked battery that will not charge. They sent back completely untested. It took all of ten seconds to determine that the battery does not charge.

3) Live up to your warranty. A company is only as good as its reputation, and not living up to your warranty is terrible for your reputation.