Samsung Tech Support (A Rant)

[Rinaun]

A client's new Samsung Monitor (LS24C45KBWV/GO) died 3 months into use. He called me up, and after a general once-over (different cables, check lights, etc) I started the RMA process. Little did I know Samsung support is the Hanoi Hilton of warranty departments. It's now 3 weeks later and not only has Samsung given me wrong numbers, but they can't even give me a simple phone call back when they themselves said they would.

First incident: My monitor doesn't even show up on the Samsung website list under the support section. I had to call in to get the monitor added to my account, and during this I tried starting the warranty process. The lady informed me that "this monitor is so new we need someone higher up to call you back". She gave me a support ID number which I had her repeat 4 times to make sure everything was OK (by now approaching 40 minutes on the phone). She then said I should be expecting a call sometime that week to continue with the warranty process.

Well, it's now week 3 and I decided they've had PLENTY of time. I this time use the live chat since I disliked waiting on the phone last time. I gave the tech my service number and well.....I'll just paste what's happened so far:

Nicolas: Please provide the service transaction number to assist you better.
richard: ****671697
Nicolas: Thanks for the ticket number.
Nicolas: Could you please hold for 4 minutes while I gather the required information?
richard: thanks.
Nicolas: You are welcome.
Nicolas: Thanks for holding.
Nicolas: I apologize for delay.
richard: this is why I chose chat over the phone
richard: last time took over an hour
richard: to be told I'd be called back....
richard: and never called back.
richard: plus I can record this
Nicolas: The transaction number which you have provided (****671697) is for the service of a crome book (XE303C12-A01US).
Nicolas: Are you referring to the Samsung monitor or crome book?
richard: uh no, this is for a LS24C45KBWV/GO monitor
richard: I had the lady read me the numbers 3 times in order to verify the numbers I had written down were correct
richard: so what you are telling me is your staff not only gave me false numbers 3 times, but I've been sitting 3 weeks waiting for nothing?
Nicolas: Please provide your E-mail address and phone number.
richard: [my email]
richard: phone number is [number]
richard: please understand that I had her read the number 3 times with zero confusion each time.
Nicolas: I truly understand your requirement, Richard. I am a consumer myself. As per our database the ticket number ****671697 is of the service for crome book.
richard: this is pretty horrendous and as a purchasing agent for franchises, don't expect me to be purchasing your monitors or brand next time we refurbish any section.
Nicolas: I will check the information with your E-mail address and phone number.
Nicolas: I definitely know that could be frustrating. If I’d been in your situation, I would feel the same. Please give me an opportunity to assist you.
richard: I did.... 3 weeks ago
Nicolas: I am checking the information. Please give me a minute.
Nicolas: I have find the service transaction with your phone number. The transaction number is 4121671691. Let me check the details for you.
richard: sounds like she fucked up
richard: how can you screw up reading a number 4 times to someone?
richard: you read them the wrong number
Nicolas: I understand.
richard: 4121671697 vs 4121671691 (6 digits off
richard: well as I said I have a recorded phone log of three weeks ago
richard: your guy's move.
Nicolas: I believe the person on the phone support did not informed you to send the monitor to the service center. Is that correct?
richard: yes.
Nicolas: I apologize for inconvenience caused.
Nicolas: Would you mind holding for few more minutes while I work on the issue?
richard: sure
Nicolas: I will be right with you.
Nicolas: Thank you.
Nicolas: Thanks for holding.
Nicolas: I apologize for delay.
Nicolas: I’m sorry; we are having technical difficulties, and are unable to access the database to provide you with information. Please try contacting us after a couple of hours, and we would be happy to help. This chat will be saved in our records for future references and the ticket ID of this chat is :LTK1117901308359X.
richard: wait
richard: are you joking?
richard: im not calling you back, im taking you to small claims if this is true
richard: its 3 weeks now
richard: I guess were done here?
richard: so you CANNOT at this moment RMA for me
richard: during normal business hours
richard: correct?
richard: I just need written proof
richard: you can contact me back, but the courts dont require me to keep hounding you guys to honor your warranty
richard: you realize this, right?
richard: just making sure you realize this
richard: or my house address is available
Nicolas: I understand your requirement, Richard. We are experiencing technical difficulties and unable to access our database to setup the request. I could have surely setup if we can access our database.
Nicolas: I hope you understand our limitations.
richard: well good thing is im not taking you personally to court
richard: I guess thats it
richard: so you guys dont want to call me back?
richard: or email me later when its up?

Discuss.

 

[Maligx]

They're all like that. I have a asus motherboard I sent in for RMA because the USB 3.0 ports stopped working. I sent it in, payed shipping and it took them 3 or 4 weeks to send the motherboard back. I put it in, windows was corrupted so I had to reinstall the OS. What'ya know the fucking USB 3.0 ports STILL don't work. So I waited 3 to 4 weeks, paid shipping to them and had to reinstall windows only to find out they DID NOT do shit for those 4 weeks. This was months ago, I really didn't feel liking dealing with their bullshit so I just procrastinated on the issue. I guess I will have to do an advanced replacement when I get around to it.

 

[Rinaun]

They're all like that. I have a asus motherboard I sent in for RMA because the USB 3.0 ports stopped working. I sent it in, payed shipping and it took them 3 or 4 weeks to send the motherboard back. I put it in, windows was corrupted so I had to reinstall the OS. What'ya know the fucking USB 3.0 ports STILL don't work. So I waited 3 to 4 weeks, paid shipping to them and had to reinstall windows only to find out they DID NOT do shit for those 4 weeks. This was months ago, I really didn't feel liking dealing with their bullshit so I just procrastinated on the issue. I guess I will have to do an advanced replacement when I get around to it.

I'm tempted on calling tomorrow, attempting once last time and if I can't get it handled I'll just place a claim at small claims court if I can or look for legal counsel. I just don't like being shoved around for 8 weeks over a BRAND new monitor that had a very nice surge protector on it; I'm positive its a manufacturer issue and not my client. He hasn't even adjusted a single thing on it since I installed the monitor and it had zero fingerprint marks/dust on the top parts.

TECHNICALLY I could fuck a vendor, buy another monitor and just put this one back in the box. It's fucked how the world works, isn't it?

 

[rudeguy]

you sound like an ass

 

[Rinaun]

you sound like an ass

Expecting things to work and when they don't, expecting them to honor their warranty without me hounding them is being an ass?

K.

P.S. I've dealt with a "few" (re: used to be a vendor) companies and their RMA processes are totally fine. I think the worst besides this was Asus as mentioned above and that's because they attempt to fix EVERYTHING any way possible before sending out a new unit.

edit: reading other forums. Someone posted this:

My experience with Samsung has been abysmal. You call, they take your info and say you'll receive a call within a week and then nothing. After two or three weeks you call again and then they say you'll get a call within the week and nothing. Then you call back after it is clear you won't get a call and they parrot the same line to you once again, appending it with "if you don't receive a call by such and such a date to call back". It seems if you wait too long for the call that is supposed to come but never does they drop you from the queue.

After a couple of months of this they had the balls to tell me I was now out of warranty.

A registered letter to corporate informing them I would be filing a small claims action for breach of warranty finally got them off their butts.

 

[momeNt]

Expecting things to work and when they don't, expecting them to honor their warranty without me hounding them is being an ass?

K.

P.S. I've dealt with a "few" (re: used to be a vendor) companies and their RMA processes are totally fine. I think the worst besides this was Asus as mentioned above and that's because they attempt to fix EVERYTHING any way possible before sending out a new unit.

I destroyed an ABIT motherboard trying to get a phase change cooling unit to fit on. RMA'd that fucker and not a question was asked. Too bad they no longer exist.

 

[rudeguy]

Expecting things to work and when they don't, expecting them to honor their warranty without me hounding them is being an ass?

K.

P.S. I've dealt with a "few" (re: used to be a vendor) companies and their RMA processes are totally fine. I think the worst besides this was Asus as mentioned above and that's because they attempt to fix EVERYTHING any way possible before sending out a new unit.

edit: reading other forums. Someone posted this:

My experience with Samsung has been abysmal. You call, they take your info and say you'll receive a call within a week and then nothing. After two or three weeks you call again and then they say you'll get a call within the week and nothing. Then you call back after it is clear you won't get a call and they parrot the same line to you once again, appending it with "if you don't receive a call by such and such a date to call back". It seems if you wait too long for the call that is supposed to come but never does they drop you from the queue.

After a couple of months of this they had the balls to tell me I was now out of warranty.

A registered letter to corporate informing them I would be filing a small claims action for breach of warranty finally got them off their butts.

didn't read this post, don't care

You swore at them and threatened a lawsuit. You broke rule #'s 1 and 2. If I were them, I'd wait to hear from your lawyer before risking being verbally assaulted again.

Jackass

 

[WT]

Similar experience with Chromebook RMAs lately. We RMA'd probably a half dozen in the past two months - most were painless. Last two that we had, the Samsung RMA # we were given was no longer a valid # ... ??
We found a new phone #, called and gave them our info, which they ALWAYS had on record. So now they are telling us they have no record of our previous RMAs, and we needed to give them all of the info and billing again.
It's a minor inconvenience, but its becoming the norm, not the exception, and it isn't limited to Samsung ... it's damn near all major vendors !

 

[Rinaun]

didn't read this post, don't care

You swore at them and threatened a lawsuit. You broke rule #'s 1 and 2. If I were them, I'd wait to hear from your lawyer before risking being verbally assaulted again.

Jackass

You sound like the kind of person who bends over a ton in life in a large amount of scenarios. It's been 3 weeks plus the 2 weeks I tried doing it through the automated process. I've also had to buy the client a monitor which I won't just take back or some shitty scam, so yeah I'm going to be a bit aggressive over those two issues that THEY caused.

 

[Rinaun]

Similar experience with Chromebook RMAs lately. We RMA'd probably a half dozen in the past two months - most were painless. Last two that we had, the Samsung RMA # we were given was no longer a valid # ... ??
We found a new phone #, called and gave them our info, which they ALWAYS had on record. So now they are telling us they have no record of our previous RMAs, and we needed to give them all of the info and billing again.
It's a minor inconvenience, but its becoming the norm, not the exception, and it isn't limited to Samsung ... it's damn near all major vendors !

It's good to hear my case isn't something freakishly unusual. Every RMA so far sans this and the Asus one (in 2006-07 on the terrible 680i's) have been fine.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I destroyed an ABIT motherboard trying to get a phase change cooling unit to fit on. RMA'd that fucker and not a question was asked. Too bad they no longer exist.

Perhaps they lost too much money to warranty fraud

 

[momeNt]

Perhaps they lost too much money to warranty fraud

()

They could have always denied the RMA once they received what I sent them. I would have been in no position to argue that.

 

[DigDog]

They're all like that. I have a asus motherboard I sent in for RMA because the USB 3.0 ports stopped working. I sent it in, payed shipping and it took them 3 or 4 weeks to send the motherboard back. I put it in, windows was corrupted so I had to reinstall the OS. What'ya know the fucking USB 3.0 ports STILL don't work. So I waited 3 to 4 weeks, paid shipping to them and had to reinstall windows only to find out they DID NOT do shit for those 4 weeks. This was months ago, I really didn't feel liking dealing with their bullshit so I just procrastinated on the issue. I guess I will have to do an advanced replacement when I get around to it.

you must live in europe

Asus has the best build quality of all, they cannot conceive that their products might not work. If something should happen, here is what you do. Take a hammer.
Smash the whatever-asus-thing you bought. Make a big hole in it.
Send it in for RMA; tell them you dont know why, but it doesnt work.
Enjoy your new Asus item.

 

[rh71]

I wish Logitech made everything because their customer service & support is top notch.

 

[MotionMan]

I had some pretty frustrating calls and chats like that. However, swearing and threatening legal action are probably the worst way to get your problem resolved (FYI, I am a litigation attorney, so I can actually follow through on a lawsuit with no problem, if I felt like it).

You can be firm and show your dissatisfaction in much more productive ways.

That being said, good luck OP.

MotionMan

 

[thecoolnessrune]

You sound like the kind of person who bends over a ton in life in a large amount of scenarios. It's been 3 weeks plus the 2 weeks I tried doing it through the automated process. I've also had to buy the client a monitor which I won't just take back or some shitty scam, so yeah I'm going to be a bit aggressive over those two issues that THEY caused.

Please show the evidence of the person you talked to, the person you verbally assaulted, and the person you tried to act all e-tough guy talked to, causing your monitor to fail, and not being able to provide an adequate replacement.

Your response here, and your OP, prove you're not only an asshole, but an incredibly incompetent fool for not being able to see the difference.

But go ahead, pretend your incompetence is justified. Hopefully your "clients" will notice you're worthlessness in basic interaction skills, and can safely avoid you

 

[tommo123]

didn't read this post, don't care

You swore at them and threatened a lawsuit. You broke rule #'s 1 and 2. If I were them, I'd wait to hear from your lawyer before risking being verbally assaulted again.

Jackass

he didn't verbally assault them. it was in text. if it was over the phone then i agree with you but aggression doesnt carry in contextually in the same way. i'd be fine having a chat conversation like that but the 1st time he'd swear on the phone i'd warn him and on the 2nd sweary i'd hang up on him (our process).

anyway, OP is right. you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get an RMA or decent service. it's why i won't buy logitech again as their support sucks and why i'm more like my father now and give companies 2 attempts then fill in the small claims web form - or do a chargeback on my credit card.

 

[Rinaun]

he didn't verbally assault them. it was in text. if it was over the phone then i agree with you but aggression doesnt carry in contextually in the same way.

Pretty much this. I wasn't even swearing at the person on the phone; I was commenting on the previous CS rep whom gave me the wrong phone number and put me on hold for 50 minutes and accomplished nothing for me. I worked in Customer Service for a year or so before starting my own company and I'm fairly aware of their rights and my rights in terms of verbal and textual conversations. If you think I'm rude then you clearly don't deal with customers on a daily basis in your line of work.

anyway, OP is right. you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get an RMA or decent service. it's why i won't buy logitech again as their support sucks and why i'm more like my father now and give companies 2 attempts then fill in the small claims web form - or do a chargeback on my credit card.

This again. I'm going to call once more and then just go to claims court as I make way more than its worth to spend the time to hunt Samsung down to fix something that shouldn't of died 3 months into use. It's not like I'm lazy or something, every time I've contacted them they've told me either call back later or we'll call you.

 

[Exterous]

You sound like the kind of person who bends over a ton in life in a large amount of scenarios. It's been 3 weeks plus the 2 weeks I tried doing it through the automated process. I've also had to buy the client a monitor which I won't just take back or some shitty scam, so yeah I'm going to be a bit aggressive over those two issues that THEY caused.

Understanding there are better ways to handle the situation doesn't mean you bend over

If you think I'm rude then you clearly don't deal with customers on a daily basis in your line of work.

Haha - no. Dealing with customers on a daily basis doesn't equate to swearing and threatening legal action. You are obviously ignorant, naive or have not dealt with a lot of customers if you think people won't consider swearing being rude not to mention the constant condescending attitude displayed in your messages.

FWIW I've dealt with customers every work day for the last ~14 years

 

[lxskllr]

Should have gone with Dell. Their RMAs have always been flawless for me. I also like their monitors. I guess they still make decent displays. Mine's 6 or 7 years old now. Maybe they got worse.

 

[Rinaun]

Should have gone with Dell. Their RMAs have always been flawless for me. I also like their monitors. I guess they still make decent displays. Mine's 6 or 7 years old now. Maybe they got worse.

I think I will, thanks for reminding me about dell. I used to buy dell only but for large-scale projects I couldn't just go "buy another" without over-nighting them. I also had good experience with my monitor (245bw that still works after 4 years of daily use).

Haha - no. Dealing with customers on a daily basis doesn't equate to swearing and threatening legal action. You are obviously ignorant, naive or have not dealt with a lot of customers if you think people won't consider swearing being rude not to mention the constant condescending attitude displayed in your messages.

FWIW I've dealt with customers every work day for the last ~14 years

In what industry? I'd love to know because what industry you are dealing will say a lot about what type of customer you are going to deal with. I wouldn't talk this way to a networking equipment vendor, semiconductor vendor, or other specialized retail outlet where being lost as a customer would affect me in some way. This is samsung support: they've admitted several times their own website doesn't work correctly, and I'm still looking at an 8 week wait. I'll have had the monitor broken for longer than I owned it. At 300$+ I think I have a slight right to be a bit angered.

Anyways I think it's been noted by a few of you that saying "fucked", or being angered of a 8+ week wait is being "an asshole". That isn't shocking compared to some peoples values shown on this forum. I find it funny I said fucked once (not even in relation to the person talking to me; to someone who blatantly screwed up)which makes me an asshole or rude somehow....that's really just comical to me. If I said screwed you'd still find something to be angered about I'm sure.

I had some pretty frustrating calls and chats like that. However, swearing and threatening legal action are probably the worst way to get your problem resolved (FYI, I am a litigation attorney, so I can actually follow through on a lawsuit with no problem, if I felt like it).

You can be firm and show your dissatisfaction in much more productive ways.

That being said, good luck OP.

MotionMan

Thanks. In the future I probably won't be threatening legal action out-loud. In hindsight, warning someone you are legal pursing them sounds like a bad tactical plan and irrelevant if it's just some joe-schmo. I still see no issue with the swearing in the context used. It's informal and crude..........but rude? That's stretching it. I waited 2 weeks longer for them to tell me they weren't even doing anything. I think it's completely appropriate to say "someone fucked up" in that scenario.

 

[Exterous]

In what industry? I'd love to know because what industry you are dealing will say a lot about what type of customer you are going to deal with.

Consumer retail, tech support and semi-conductor.

This is samsung support: they've admitted several times their own website doesn't work correctly, and I'm still looking at an 8 week wait. I'll have had the monitor broken for longer than I owned it. At 300$+ I think I have a slight right to be a bit angered.

Anyways I think it's been noted by a few of you that saying "fucked", or being angered of a 8+ week wait is being "an asshole". That isn't shocking compared to some peoples values shown on this forum. I find it funny I said fucked once (not even in relation to the person talking to me; to someone who blatantly screwed up)which makes me an asshole or rude somehow....that's really just comical to me. If I said screwed you'd still find something to be angered about I'm sure.

Who said you didn't have a right to be angered? Don't make up reasons why you don't like our responses. The problem is how you handled yourself not that you were angered.

As for swearing - personally I don't have a problem with it but I am not so stupid as to think that there isn't a large swath of the population that would. Furthermore - I notice you completely ignored the 'condescending attitude' part of my comment which is the biggest part of your rudeness.

I still see no issue with the swearing in the context used. It's informal and crude..........but rude?

You admit its crude but don't think its rude? Apparently you don't know what those words mean. They're synonyms!

 

[Customer]

Nicolas, the very same MOFO just cut me off in chat, not being able to answer even an extremely basic question. He was playing the country card (tv not from the US), basically saying not US support responsibility. I don't believe in Santa Claus anymore, hence I also don't believe that Samsung TVs worldwide are that much different.

Having read the comments above, they should either at least fire Nicolas, or close down US chat support altogether, if he is represenative of the whole US chat support team.

If I am dissatified ?? I think that is no expression for how I feel like right now. If I had the chance, I would have personally kicked his fat, lazy donut eating and soda sipping ass off his office chair. I guess in comparison to him even Homer Simpson is a hard worker.

 

[blackdogdeek]

This has got to be the best first-post necro ever.

 

[MotionMan]

So, I wonder if he is still waiting for an RMA.

MotionMan