Troubled Galaxy customer support experience

puzzled23 · ‎15-04-2023

Hello Forum,

please forgive my lengthy article, but the case is a real problem for me, and it grew a bit complicated unfortunately.

I recently purchased my first SAMSUNG phone.

Unfortunately, the factory fresh device suffered from the problem to not adapt it's CSC from the preconfigured EUX to it's current geo location during the first time initialisation (should have happened according to the inserted SIM), and therefore i was not able to install OTA updates.

The device came directly from a sealed box, from the shop.

Everything worked perfectly fine, as can be expected from a brand-new, never-used-before device out of the box.
Hardware tests all finished successfully (USSD Codes like "*#0*#, *#0011#, #*#0*#*#*, *#9090#" etc., but also simply by handling the device during initialisation and debugging) Firmware resets and installation of Playstore updates worked perfectly fine.

It was really *just* the SAMSUNG updates that did not work.

Technically speaking a simple and also known problem (e.g. known for SAMSUNG S20).

Therefore i contacted the SAMSUNG support via email, and was immediately and on point helped with the proposal to visit a local SAMSUNG Support Center (CSP).

At the local CSP (service contractor) the process derailed completely:

When handing in the phone at the service at 10:00 AM, the above problem was explicitly communicated, understood and agreed upon with the service reception:
that all it takes to fix the problem would be to adjust the current CSC away from "EUX" to "DBT", which is nothing but a configuration/software problem.

Next day at 9:00 AM i was notified that the repair is finished.
When fetching the phone from the shop, i was informed that "ALMOST ANY COMPONENT HAVE BEEN REPLACED" (original wording of the repair service), nota bene: of this *factory fresh* and 100% fully functional and almost unused device.

This included:

the display,
the modem,
the Wifi antenna, and
"additional" components the service was not able to specify one day later.

All of this without asking the customer for permission to proceed like this.

I was really shocked and upset, because i had read two days earlier in an internet customer review about this specific CSP service point from a customer, who warned that for him the perfectly fine display was swapped without asking him, and he had to pay for it. But back then i deemed that an obscure edge case and ignored it.

Given the fact

that the device is a A52s, which at this point in 12/2023 an already 2 years old model and 1 year out of production, and the fact
that CSP is not specialised on servicing mobile devices, and
the entire repair took from 10:00 AM to 9:00 AM next day, and
the display definitely looks actually used, with a used protection film reattached very sloppily (am able to provide photographic evidence),
and they apparently did not dare to ask for confirmation for this highly invasive repair procedure, which totally deviates from the actual repair order

i can't believe that all other components are factory-new.

My doubts were then corroborated, when i asked for a explanation for all this weirdness, which they simply could not provide:

They started with claiming, the display would have had "a wrong country code" and that blocked the OTA updates.
When i did not accept this obviously made up explanation, they tried again with claiming, the modem and the WiFi antenna would have been defect, and that would have blocked the OTA updates. When i insisted that this makes no sense, as post-firmware-reset installations and Playstore updates ALWAYS worked perfectly fine for me right before handing in the device, they simply had no answer.
When i then wanted to know which "other components" would have been defect as they mentioned before, they claimed, they can't remember, although the repair happened just the previous day.

At this point i had a clear idea of what happened, as also my friends did.

Therefore i immediately got back in contact with the SAMSUNG support via email, telling them in any detail what happened and asking for a device replacement.
Since i handed in a fabric-fresh device and received a device with swapped in components of visually questionable origin in return, and no trust in the left over quality of this highly modified device.

Unfortunately, they did not actually help:
Every other of my repeated attempts to ask for a solution was serviced by someone else, and all of them (always kindly) kept repeating mechanically the same stanza, that *any* repair conducted by an official CSP repair is to be considered justified and trustworthy, but not commenting on any of the obvious oddities of the entire incident.
Apparently they did not read my description, ignored it, or simply did not believe it (which i could actually understand).

Any time i then replied, asking for explanation of the obvious nonsense the service told and the entire weirdness of this incident, the SAMSUNG email support simply stopped responding.

At this point i can't help but believe that SAMSUNG prefers covering up the obviously questionable business practice of their CSP/service contractor, while not protecting their own customer against this same business practice.

Which i simply still can not believe - yet.

Not from SAMSUNG.
I have intentionally chosen SAMSUNG over other technically very attractive Chinese phone alternatives because of the assumed premium service, and i was willing to pay the extra fee for it.

Which now brings me to my question: do some of you know about a suitable contact at SAMSUNG, which might be willing to take care of customer needs in the professional and decent quality i assumed so far?

My impression is that so far i only got in contact with call centre agents, which rotate with any other interaction of a support ticket, and actually don't have true options, to make the decisions that would resolve this case for good.

It matters a lot to me.

I not only will never use this phone, because i don't trust it any more, and am disgusted by what i had to go through with this device so far.
But if the current state would already be the "solution" of this case, i could never trust a SAMSUNG product in the future anymore.
Having learned that a SAMSUNG product can be brilliant, but only as long as it is fully functional and does not need to be serviced.

How would you go about it?

Best regards