Samsung Customer Service Sucks

ian

ian

Administrator
Staff member
I have been one of the biggest Samsung fans, I have bought no fewer than 7 Samsung tv's and monitors, the most recent purchase was a 55" 3d plasma tv.
I have always recommended their tv's and monitors.
But I have to say their customer service does suck. I have spent two weeks trying to get my new P2370HD monitor fixed, and they still havent picked it up. The monitor is only a little over a month old, and I have had problems from day one, with it switching on and off randomly all on its own. Who knows what they will do when they do eventually pick it up.
But I had a problem last year with a panasonic pvr, and they had fixed the problem, in the time that samsung has even to look at it. Panasonic customer service is good, and I will probably make my next tv purchase either a Sony or Panasonic.
For a moment there, I thought the korean manufacturers were going to be better than the Japanese, but looks like they are really being let down by poor customer service. Taking a week to reply to an email and not returning your phone call.
Looking at this thread at costco, looks like this might be a manufacturer fault, or a bad batch.
http://reviews.costco.com/2070/1148...hdtv-free-shipping-reviews/reviews.htm?page=2
Poltergiest
Model Number: P2370HD
"I bought this TV for our bedroom but it had lots of problems. First, even though I had the "bright" setting maxed out, the picture was to dark during daylight hours. Also, the sound quality was poor and seemed muffled. Then, to top it all off, the set began to turn itself on and off at random and at all hours of the day and night. No thanks! Thank God for the 90 day return policy. This one's going back tomorrow."
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Erratic Functions
"I just bought one. OMG! It turns on and off at will. It runs through the channels on its own. I am going to return it, but I'm not sure that I should buy another one given that someone else wrote a review and stated that several others had been returned to the store."
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Should be pulled off from the shelf
Pros: good picture quality and nice overall design
Cons: there is a known defect as described below
Model Number: P2370HD
"I bought this product last Sunday and found that it started to turn off and on all by itself the very night; I called Samsung tech support and was told that it was just unfortunate that I have gotten a defect unit. So I returned the purchase to Costco the next day and bought exactly the same one again thinking of giving it a second shot. Everything was OK but didn't last for 24 hours (better than the first one though, which didn't even last for 4 hours). I had to make a second trip to returned it to the store with frustration... Strongly suggest Costco to pull out all the same items off the shelf until Samsung has resolved the problem. Otherwise I love the picture quality and other features…"
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won't turn off
Model Number: Syncmaster P2370HD
"Glad to see others are having the same problem. Called Samsung several times and returned the TV twice. Samsung says it has something to do with the power surge. So we attached a powersurge cord, didn't work. TV keeps turning on and off at will, mostly in the AM hours. Picture is too dark if TV is mounted above the head. Otherwise it's ok for the money. We are going to try the Vizio. My sister (computer exec) says that this was a monitor turned TV and that they don't work well in either case whether used for computer/TV or for TV itself."
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Good product broken.
Model Number: 2370hd
"Purchased on line and got it pretty fast via UPS. After setup, seemed ok until I shut it off and within 10 minutes it turned itself on. Then turned itself off then on then ran thru the channels so had to unplug. After replugging it back in, it continued to turn itself on and off. When I returned it the next day to the store, I found that they had already returned seven others with the same problem."
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The last person said when they returned it, there were 7 others returned with exactly the same problem.
Over the phone, they denied there was a problem with this model, will be interesting to see how it all works out.
 
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Aw man that sucks. I have a samsung monitor, HDD and ODD in my rig, and I once had a samsung phone, great products, but I must say i've never had to deal with their customer service.
 
I have dual Samsung Synmasters 24" for about 3 yrs now and no problems. Nor with my cell phone. I do Love my tv though. Sony Bravio 40". Does everything but the dishes.
 
I have a samsung LCD monitor from back when they were first released, and even though I gave it away, it still works perfectly. The samsung TV in my bedroom, once again it is brilliant, and never had a problem before, one of the reasons I always recommended their products to people.
Even the monitor I recently bought, didnt work via the HDMI cable, I think that may be due to incorrect settings, but the picture was perfect via the DVI Cable.
But do a search on google for "Samsung Customer Service"

The first result is this "Samsung Customer Service = Horrible"
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Custo...1G16XD8O63WR/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B000F2PHDI

The second result is "Samsung Customer Service Sucks"
http://www.planetfeedback.com/samsu...service/samsung+customer+service+sucks/272424

If you do a search for "Panasonic Customer Service" you do not get the top two results with comments like that.
 
I would like to add that this problem is with Samsung Australia(NSW). Although I don't have experience with Samsung USA, they seem to be very switched on and customer focused, well at least that is the impression I get, from their social media presence on twitter.
 
I have had to push them and complain every step of the way, otherwise I get the impression they would do absolutely nothing.
I first complained about it in January, its March now, and still cannot get an answer on when I will get my monitor back fixed, it was defective out of the box. Perhaps I am being too harsh in expecting customer service comparable to the service I received from Panasonic, but I will never buy another Samsung product at this stage.
 
I can also say their support sucks. there was a firmware update for my HDD, with no clear instructions on how to use it. Emailed their support, got the same message over and over again, with instructions that didn't work.

I knew I needed a DOS boot cd or flash drive, but what they didn't tell you was that you needed to disable the onboard SATA controller before the firmware flash would work.
 
Having second thoughts on buying from Samsung. Had some problems with F1 drives a few years ago. The junk they sent me for replacements were as bad as the ones I sent back. Plus they tried not to take them back to start with, claiming OEM drives had no warranty. Didn't buy anything from them for awhile but got a few F3 drives lately and hadn't had any problems so far.
 
I am thinking of buying another brand monitor.
If I ever get the samsung one back, I should make a video like this one.
[YT]hx0cg9qMevM&NR[/YT]
 
StrangleHold said:
Having second thoughts on buying from Samsung. Had some problems with F1 drives a few years ago. The junk they sent me for replacements were as bad as the ones I sent back. Plus they tried not to take them back to start with, claiming OEM drives had no warranty. Didn't buy anything from them for awhile but got a few F3 drives lately and hadn't had any problems so far.
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I have the F3 which is fine, and a samsung DVD burner. Their products are fine but their support is meh

ian said:
I am thinking of buying another brand monitor.
If I ever get the samsung one back, I should make a video like this one.
[YT]hx0cg9qMevM&NR[/YT]
Click to expand...

Monitor or TV? My grandad chose a Panasonic Viera 42" - best thing of all, the remote from his old CRT panasonic worked with the new plasma :D
 
linkin said:
I have the F3 which is fine, and a samsung DVD burner. Their products are fine but their support is meh



Monitor or TV? My grandad chose a Panasonic Viera 42" - best thing of all, the remote from his old CRT panasonic worked with the new plasma :D
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I have samsung monitors and tv's, but the problem I have is with the monitor.
The panasonic viera x series plasma's have a very nice picture.
 
StrangleHold said:
Well I misspoke on that. I do buy Samsung DVD burners. Use to buy LiteOn (junk). Then changed to LG, then bluebird came along. Now I use Samsung.
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Yeah, i'm not really a fan of LiteOn either, i prefer Sony Optiarc or Samsung optical drives. As far as hard drives, samsung has really stepped up their game recently IMO, especially with the F3/F4 lineup.

As far as samsung displays...not really a fan anymore, they use super cheap CapXon caps on their power boards, which is why their power boards are known for failures, same sort of thing goes with their inverters, they aren't really known for longevity. Image quality is generally great (Barring some exceptions like the T2_0HD lineup), but support & component quality has really been dropping.
 
Well samsung finally got a sub contractor to pick the monitor up some time ago.
I emailed the sub contractor after a while asking when it would be ready and they ignored the email.
I emailed the person from Samsung who had organised the repair and asked for the email for the customer service manager, and yes in typical samsung fashion, they completely ignored that email request as well.
Yes Samsung Australia will generally ignore emails and will not return phone calls.
Somebody I know was joking and saying that they will probably just return it without doing anything with it.
So I did not get any emails or phone calls that the monitor was repaired and would be delivered. It just arrived on the doorstep on Thursday 24th March.
Now I was looking throughout the package for some sort of document from the repair agent of what had been done with the monitor, had they updated the firmware, had they replaced the power board, there was not a scrap of paper indicating they had done a single thing with it, even if they could not find a fault, they could have just said "no fault found" When my panasonic PVR was repaired, there was a paper from the repair agent saying that they had replaced the DVD drive.
So I give them the benefit of the doubt, and think oh well, maybe they have fixed it.
Today the monitor started doing the same thing, going on and making a noise on its own. In the absence of any other information I can only assume they did nothing.
And from the information I posted in the opening post in this thread, I am guessing it is some kind of bad batch or manufacturers defect. I have two other samsung monitors which have zero problems and they are plugged into the same setup. I have also tried this monitor in two different houses and it has the same problem.
At the moment I would only be happy with two outcomes.
1. If they refunded the money I paid, and took the product back.
2. If they replaced it, with a similar (new not refurbished) 23"model not the p2370hd that is not plagued by this problem, I do not need a tv tuner built into the tv.
If my current experience with their customer service is anything to go by, I am guessing they will do neither of those things. I will call them again on Monday morning.
If they do nothing I will just replace it with a Dell monitor, I had contacted their customer service via twitter and at least @dellcares cares about customers from Australia that have problems.
Also, if they do nothing, I will never buy nor recommend a Samsung product ever again.
 
See its been going on quite a while. Never had any problems but with other manufactures have been including stores for service. My self im a player in small claims court. I banked all conversations, receipts, dates, times and if the paper work for court is filled properly sheet can happen. They have to be represented by and attorney because they are incorporated . and then after arriving for court date i might postpone, postpone or just follow through. Ive always won though. Its the presentation that counts and and paper work. they do not want to fight. there lawyer would say pay him.
im just saying you could i think stir there pot.
i like perseverance though. goes a long way.

If you did the paper work has to be filled out properly. Or its thrown out of court. My source was a paperback book on how to fill out. Or have a lawyer to fill it out only and you represent your self. In my lifetime i have done maybe 5 or six time and never lost. Other option. go over there head and and speak to a manager or call the corp office. good luck..........

I remember my first. Bought a tv only for living room. Montgomery ward and brand new. Didn't work. took it back and said i have to put in the shop. this was in the early 70's. i fixed that one in court. That was my first adventure.
 
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Yes, I am not going to take things that far. I will try one more time and then thats it.
As it stands, I have probably wasted more than the cost of the monitor in trying to get them to fix it.
I had a similar situation with microsoft, was so frustrated with their service, it was a brand new install of Vista. I am not a pc gamer, so I just went out and bought a mac. Have not looked back since, I just dont use Windows anymore, even though I do have several Windows machines. Although I have purchased Office for Mac, and still personally support the xbox. I mean how hard would it have been to offer me a downgrade to windows xp if their vista did not work properly. Instead they want to charge me $80 an hour to look into the problem.
Apple is a company that I have only experienced excellent customer service, microsoft I used to be one of their biggest fans, but not anymore.
Microsoft used to be a much bigger company than Apple, now look at where they are today.
Apple Market Cap $323.9B
Microsoft Market Cap $215.3B
Samsung may be the world's biggest electronics manufacturer today, but companies with poor customer service inevitably fail, while those that have good product and good service continue to do better.
 
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After getting the monitor back, and it doing the same thing it was doing before. I called up and insisted on speaking to a customer service manager. Prior to this when I tried to explain the problem, they just said it had to go to a repair agent, there was no attempt made to help me troubleshoot what the problem was. And the searches I had done, kept alluding to it needing to be plugged into a surge protector/surge protector with a backup battery supply.
Anyhow, after speaking to Mahesh at samsung, he was very helpful, gave me a couple of things to try out. And it seems to have worked. He was a cut above the other staff, I guess thats why he was a supervisor, and I get the impression that he would have worked with me to make sure I had a satisfactory outcome.
I have had a lot of samsung monitors and tv's and none of them do this, but this one apparently is set to look for a software update every 45 minutes when it is in standby mode. So it was going on and making a noise at 45 minutes and then going off every 5 minutes after that. A simple thing which could be disabled from the menu options.
So my faith has basically been restored in Samsung monitors again. I wont say I was happy with the customer service I received before that, but in the end, getting the issue resolved was all that matters to me. I am once more a fan of Samsung products, perhaps not the superfan I once was, but I will definitely buy Samsung monitors/tvs again. There was never any issue of the monitor having an excellent image quality.
 
ian said:
After getting the monitor back, and it doing the same thing it was doing before. I called up and insisted on speaking to a customer service manager. Prior to this when I tried to explain the problem, they just said it had to go to a repair agent, there was no attempt made to help me troubleshoot what the problem was. And the searches I had done, kept alluding to it needing to be plugged into a surge protector/surge protector with a backup battery supply.
Anyhow, after speaking to Mahesh at samsung, he was very helpful, gave me a couple of things to try out. And it seems to have worked. He was a cut above the other staff, I guess thats why he was a supervisor, and I get the impression that he would have worked with me to make sure I had a satisfactory outcome.
I have had a lot of samsung monitors and tv's and none of them do this, but this one apparently is set to look for a software update every 45 minutes when it is in standby mode. So it was going on and making a noise at 45 minutes and then going off every 5 minutes after that. A simple thing which could be disabled from the menu options.
So my faith has basically been restored in Samsung monitors again. I wont say I was happy with the customer service I received before that, but in the end, getting the issue resolved was all that matters to me. I am once more a fan of Samsung products, perhaps not the superfan I once was, but I will definitely buy Samsung monitors/tvs again. There was never any issue of the monitor having an excellent image quality.
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Glad to hear that, my experience with Samsung was nothing but great. My power supply had gone (bad capacitors) and they had a guy within a week at my house to repair it right in my living room. I also asked about the failure rates on them and he said it was fairly low. He told me to NEVER buy an LG. He said he could stay in business alone off of LG TV's.
 
I had to have my Samsung cellular phone replaced (because I dropped it), by dealing with their customer service. They were foreign, and I couldn't understand their names, however, they were very helpful, and apologized a lot lolz I had my phone replaced within two weeks. Probably some of the best customer service I've had.
 
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