I can’t even count how many hours I’ve spent in the past year arguing about some BS charge, trying to get something repaired under warranty, or even trying to redeem an valid coupon that was sent to me. I’ve reached a point where I’m exhausted in trying to fight these kinds of things but I feel like I can’t just let any of it go. Sometimes I wish I could hire a Karen, it would be 100% worth it.
Samsung.
I had bought a new Samsung TV from best buy and after getting it home and setting it up, I noticed that any time there was high/low contrast content moving across the screen, the image would just smear across. This made a lot of content completely unwatchable. In LCDs this is usually a result of horrendously bad response time but this was so bad that something seemed clearly wrong/malfunctioning with the unit, so I called samsung for warranty repair.
Over the next few months I had a tech come out to replace the main board on the TV, but it still had the same problem. I booked another repair appointment. The same tech came to my house a few weeks after that and replaced the entire screen. Still the same problem. There was a thread that I found by this time on AVSForum of people with the same TV all complaining of the same issue.
At this point, Samsung’s official response to me was “That’s just how the TV is”. I was really not happy about the idea of keeping the TV since I was outside the return period, so they gave me a phone number to call with a case number to escalate or hopefully resolve the issue. Its wild that they would ever even sell a TV like this.
Here’s where it gets bad:
The next day I call the number around 10AM. I sit on hold for 7 hours, then at 5PM there is a message “Our office is now closed, goodbye” then it hangs up on me. No voicemail, no callback options, nothing. There is no option to email this department, they will only take phone calls.
The day after I call the number a little earlier, around 9 AM. This time I sit on hold for 8 hours, then again there is a message at 5PM that they are now closed and hang up on me.
I wait 2 days and call back around 9AM again. at 4:45 PM I get in touch with a human, but they aren’t able to find any record of my case number and can’t help me. They’re about to close anyway, so I should just call back tomorrow. They hang up.
The next business day I got up at 7AM and called immediately when they opened, sat on hold for 8 hours and demanded to speak to someone who could actually help me. I sat on hold for another hour and eventually spoke to a manager who miraculously found my case number and acknowledged receipt that I called.
Samsung sent a company to come pick up the TV and gave me my money back about 2 months after that call. I had to spend 4 entire work days on hold with them to get them to acknowledge and take back their TV that was effectively useless garbage. I replaced it with a Sony and have been 100% happy ever since, its been working for several years now.