Samsung 42in plasma warranty joke!

Originally Posted by zerodefects

Picture goes black, buzzing starts and a crack starts to grow from left corner to top. Phone Samsung, who send a 3rd party engineer to inspect. He tells me there is no physical damage and he will order a new board will be 7-10 for parts and install.

We wait 4 days and re-contact 3rd party repair firm, to be told "We wont be fixing it, you will have to contact Samsung" who tell us "Its customer damage and not covered by warranty"

You see Samsung's warranty is that If there are any cracks on the screen it is automatically classed as 'Customer damage' as the screens do not crack by themselves..........But they do! Now Samsung have washed their hands of the whole matter. So where does that leave me the customer?????

Originally Posted by Mr. Abulia

I had an excellent experience with Sammy customer service: they replaced 2 mainboards for me just to make sure that I got the latest firmware. No muss, no fuss, just a happy can-do attitude and looking to have a happy customer. I guess service is different up North...

Originally Posted by Camster

What about home owners insurance. Would this not cover it minus the deductible? Just a thought in case Sammy doesn't deliver.

Originally Posted by discopaul

First my sympathies.
However, is there something missing in this story?
You say you purchased this "as new". Does that mean it was for example a unit on the on the shelf and not brand new unopenned unit? If so the store should replace that TV!
Also, looking at the warranty again, I do not see where they say directly or by implication that cracked glass is the customer fault.
You said the engineer found no physical damage but will replace a board? So the glass wasn't damaged?

Originally Posted by zerodefects

I guess it is......

The funny thing is its the internal glass thats gone not the external. So its obviously not something thats been thrown.

Originally Posted by GMBNT42

2 month old plasma bought as new? So was it bought new or used? Refurb? Craigs? If you bought it new, exchange it or file a chargeback with your CC, your protected. Next...............

Originally Posted by Joe_Blough

Zerodefects. It probably won't make you feel any better, but regardless of what the problem would have been, Samsung probably wouldn't have fixed it anyway. Samsung, like many other companies, discovered years ago that it just doesn't make sense to provide warranty service. They already have your money. They don't care if you never buy from them again or tell ten people who also never buy from them again. There are millions of others who will. For them to spend money fixing your TV after the sale is just foolish to them.

Companies do not have to provide warranty service. They only have to pretend to do so. This takes two forms. One, you send the product back AT YOUR EXPENSE for repair. The company then sends the product back to you without fixing it. They know that after a couple times of this, you will get tired of throwing more money away for nothing and give up.

The second tactic is to send out a local repair shop. The repair shop takes a guess at what is wrong and it is always a bad part. Problem is, the parts are controlled by the manufacturer and they always say the part you need is backordered. It really isn't but they just do this to stall. It may take 8 months or more to get the part. They are trying to get you to give up in trying to get the set fixed or hoping to run out the warranty. That way, by the time the part gets installed in your TV and doesn't fix it, the warranty is over. They also figure if the set went bad once under warranty, it is likely to do so again so they want the warranty to be over before that happens.

I bought a Samsung MP3 player once. It would not turn on. In the box was a piece of paper from Samsung telling me not to take it back to where I bought it if I had a problem but to instead contact Samsung. Of course I immediately took it back to where I bought it and let the store deal with it. I got instant satisfaction that way. You see, the stores have buying power so Samung is forced to eat it in the form of issuing the store a credit. Samsung doesn't care about an end user who buys one of their TV's once every 10 years. However, if they don't work with a store regarding their defective products, they stand to lose thousands of future sales. Samsung wants the end user to deal with them so they aren't forced to give the store a credit and then they don't have to do a thing to help the end user. You can read many reviews of products at Amazon where people didn't return a defective product to Amazon but instead went through the manufacturer and got zero satisfaction.

We teach our kids to be careful and not take candy from strangers, but we must also teach them too "Always take a defective product back to the place you bought it if it is within their return period and never deal with the manufacturer."

Of course if you buy from companies like 6Ave who won't take back big TV's no matter what, you kind of deserve what you get.

Originally Posted by PWK2000

So what are consumers supposed to do? If the store wont accept the return and the manufacturer wont fix it or is very slow to fix it?

Originally Posted by zerodefects

Well I am afraid this story doesn't have a happy ending.

The shockingly unhelpful Samsung CS department failed to help me in any and every-way possible, they rigidly adhered to their scripted prompts from the 'Problem customer with cracked screen, no return' book.

They also tried the escape route of 'It could have been damaged during transit, either to supplier or myself", also various at times rude accusations of children's parties and footballs kicked at screens etc. (we don't have any kids)

Now I am an AV technician and we have many various sizes of plasmas all in flight cases and they get tipped and transported in sprinter vans, trucks etc day after day, week after week, year on year and we have never had this type of fault in my 7 years experience.

So a word of caution to quote Samsung's customer service "Any crack to the glass is deemed as customer damage and therefore not covered by warranty" and "Our screens do not just crack on their own, this fault just does not happen"

I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER SAMSUNG PRODUCT!

Originally Posted by zerodefects

Well I am afraid this story doesn't have a happy ending.

The shockingly unhelpful Samsung CS department failed to help me in any and every-way possible, they rigidly adhered to their scripted prompts from the 'Problem customer with cracked screen, no return' book.

They also tried the escape route of 'It could have been damaged during transit, either to supplier or myself", also various at times rude accusations of children's parties and footballs kicked at screens etc. (we don't have any kids)

Now I am an AV technician and we have many various sizes of plasmas all in flight cases and they get tipped and transported in sprinter vans, trucks etc day after day, week after week, year on year and we have never had this type of fault in my 7 years experience.

So a word of caution to quote Samsung's customer service "Any crack to the glass is deemed as customer damage and therefore not covered by warranty" and "Our screens do not just crack on their own, this fault just does not happen"

I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER SAMSUNG PRODUCT!

Originally Posted by zerodefects

Well I am afraid this story doesn't have a happy ending.

The shockingly unhelpful Samsung CS department failed to help me in any and every-way possible, they rigidly adhered to their scripted prompts from the 'Problem customer with cracked screen, no return' book.

They also tried the escape route of 'It could have been damaged during transit, either to supplier or myself", also various at times rude accusations of children's parties and footballs kicked at screens etc. (we don't have any kids)

Now I am an AV technician and we have many various sizes of plasmas all in flight cases and they get tipped and transported in sprinter vans, trucks etc day after day, week after week, year on year and we have never had this type of fault in my 7 years experience.

So a word of caution to quote Samsung's customer service "Any crack to the glass is deemed as customer damage and therefore not covered by warranty" and "Our screens do not just crack on their own, this fault just does not happen"

I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER SAMSUNG PRODUCT!

Originally Posted by zerodefects

Well I am afraid this story doesn't have a happy ending.

The shockingly unhelpful Samsung CS department failed to help me in any and every-way possible, they rigidly adhered to their scripted prompts from the 'Problem customer with cracked screen, no return' book.

They also tried the escape route of 'It could have been damaged during transit, either to supplier or myself", also various at times rude accusations of children's parties and footballs kicked at screens etc. (we don't have any kids)

Now I am an AV technician and we have many various sizes of plasmas all in flight cases and they get tipped and transported in sprinter vans, trucks etc day after day, week after week, year on year and we have never had this type of fault in my 7 years experience.

So a word of caution to quote Samsung's customer service "Any crack to the glass is deemed as customer damage and therefore not covered by warranty" and "Our screens do not just crack on their own, this fault just does not happen"

I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER SAMSUNG PRODUCT!

Originally Posted by zerodefects

Well I am afraid this story doesn't have a happy ending.

The shockingly unhelpful Samsung CS department failed to help me in any and every-way possible, they rigidly adhered to their scripted prompts from the 'Problem customer with cracked screen, no return' book.

They also tried the escape route of 'It could have been damaged during transit, either to supplier or myself", also various at times rude accusations of children's parties and footballs kicked at screens etc. (we don't have any kids)

Now I am an AV technician and we have many various sizes of plasmas all in flight cases and they get tipped and transported in sprinter vans, trucks etc day after day, week after week, year on year and we have never had this type of fault in my 7 years experience.

So a word of caution to quote Samsung's customer service "Any crack to the glass is deemed as customer damage and therefore not covered by warranty" and "Our screens do not just crack on their own, this fault just does not happen"

I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER SAMSUNG PRODUCT!

Originally Posted by Powered by Soy

Totally. I wouldn't let this go. This is one of those quit-your-day-job-and-go-on-a-vendetta moments. If purely out of principle.

But yeah, I'll be making a 50" purchase in the next month or so, and currently I'm debating between the S1 and the similar priced B550. I try to take specific forum posts with a grain of salt, but this one has definitely turned me towards the Panasonic camp. Sorry, amigo.