So my phone arrive back this morning, and it all seems to be in working order, just going through the painful steps of restoring the data...
Total time taken from dropping phone....13 days
So if this helps - some tips:
Submitting a claim via the Samsung Care+ portal
If you submit via the portal and select "other" this mean your claim "hangs" and doesn't get submitted properly to the system - I only found this out after not hearing anything for two days and ended up ringing them. It seems that they are aware of this bug in the system.
Do NOT use the contact form to try and get any meaningful updates on your claim
You will end up getting an automated message and the best thing is to call them.
+44 (0) 3330091717
Collection of your phone (normally the day after the claim is approved)
Once they approve the claim, they will send some pretty poor instructions in terms of what happens next. In short:
- Back up your data
- Turn off the security settings on your phone (so no screen lock by fingerprint/password/number
- Restore to factory settings (this is probably more for your own piece of mind that you have done this, as the phone does get wiped by them anyway)
DPD will contact you to say they will deliver a care package - but they are actually going to collect the phone from you. They will have a box, take a photo of the phone and then take the phone away. If you are particularly worried about your phone being more damaged I would suggest maybe wrapping the phone up, but you might need to remove this quickly and replace it for the photo. I was not expecting them to collect my phone there and then, so I just handed my phone over and it was actually fine.
Updates on repairs
You will receive no updates on what is happening with your phone. If you call Samsung Care+ on the number above they will advise you to call another number for repairs: 03330000333
The person here was a lot more helpful and was able to confirm the status of my repair and provide me advise the next steps, as well as providing me with my repair reference number.
If you need to chase the repair place, here is yet another phone number 01782576930 (make sure you have your repair reference number)
Return of phone
You will get a message from DPD advising of when they will deliver - this generally happens the day after they have completed the repairs (they only do repairs Mon-Fri so if your phone is taken on the Friday, they will not look at it until Monday)
Anyway, hoping this helps you and anyone else who has had to submit a claim via Samsung Care+ (provided by Assurant).
