I pre ordered an S25 Ultra, bundled with Buds and Watch, with a trade in of an S22 Ultra. This has turned into by far the worst customer service experience of my life.
After the trade in was rejected thanks to an invisible "spot" on the screen (which engineers in a Samsung store I visited could not see) the order was cancelled. This has cost me, so far, over 100 USD in interest on my credit card, as it takes Samsung, apparently, up to THIRTY WORKING DAYS to cancel an order.
I will repeat that: IT TAKES SAMSUNG UP TO THIRTY WORKING DAYS TO CANCEL AN ORDER.
During that time you have ZERO recourse. A credit card transaction dispute can take several months, depending on your credit card company.
Samsung Customer Services will stonewall and obfuscate, because they know they don't need to do anything else. So far they have had 1300 USD of my money since 21 January, and I have ZERO products from Samsung.
If you really want to do a trade in, do it IN STORE. DO NOT ORDER FROM THE WEBSITE.
If you do it from a website, the delivery man will download an app to your phone which runs a test to assess the phone. This delivery person could be anyone, not necessarily a Samsung worker. They contract out to 3rd parties. These delivery people could just be random couriers who have only a basic knowledge of Samsung systems, if any.
They take images of the phone (on the their own phone) and upload it for assessment. They also run several tests on your own phone, so the process is complicated. The man who came to collect my phone did not know how to use the system, made many phone calls to his supervisor, and I even had to take the phone from him at point as he did not understand the basic instructions on the functionality test (such as Tap the squares within 10 seconds).
Below is an image of the phone. I challenge anyone to identify the "black spot" in the top right of the screen, which Samsung's assessment app "identified", even though the man who was operating the tech himself was laughing and apologising. BE WARNED - if you make this purchase and then have to cancel, YOU WIL L BE PAYING OFF THE INTEREST $$$ ON YOUR CREDIT CARD FOR A PURCHASE YOU DID NOT MAKE AND NEITHER YOUR BANK NOR SAMSUNG WILL DO ANYTHING TO HELP.
I think they may be referring to this. Very hard to see, mind—which may be more visible with other colours? Or even maybe what I've circled is an effect from the light. However, this is the UK community. As referred to above, you'll need to go to the US group.
