If you buy a Samsung device, make sure it has no quality issues... Before buying it!

I bought a Samsung S7 Edge mid-June, after 8 Iphones… Why? Sleek design, possibility to increase the RAM (not as with an Iphone), the same if not better apps (even for the native Iphone apps, I ended up using third-party more innovative apps, better for work), and, eventually, the price: 800 euros against a comparable Iphone 6S at 1.000 euros… Well, I guess I just wanted to change… Big mistake!

5 weeks later, the Samsung starts to heat up, and the battery empties in 4 hours. So I go back to the shop (FNAC, not to name them), and return to the very impressive 300 m2 sales surface of Samsung. The very nice salesperson starts to look at the phone, checks whether there is no app that is consuming too much battery and makes it heat up, but concludes that there is no issue there… So he tells me to go and see after-sales service, to change the phone…

 Quite an interesting customer experience at the counter:

• Samsung has a very strict after-sales service policy.
• If no quality default is observed after 15 (!) days, then they don’t change the device. They will repair it…
• According to the girl at the counter, average repair time: no less than 4 weeks
• Replacement phone? Yeah, against a cheque (I am a Fnac One customer, their equivalent to platinum status, but they seem to be sparse with their trust), and anyway, no smartphone, just one that allows to dial phone numbers… They don’t seem to care if you use the phone for professional purposes and not to go on Facebook…
• Icing on the cake: anyhow, she couldn’t take my phone, even to repair it, because Samsung requires the phone to be sent in WITH THE CHARGER! No other original way to encourage your customers not to use this service!

Such approach can, in my view, be excused from a small mid-level manufacturer of me-too phones, but not from the corporation that claims to have a predominant market share in Smartphones, even on the high-end, and that sells phones that are “worth” two-thirds of the minimal wages… And Samsung claims their willingness to become category captain, or even to be there yet… Same is actually true for Fnac, they also have competitors…

Dear Mr. Cook, dear deeply regretted Mr. Jobs, I just want to apologize for not having been faithful and to tell you it won’t happen again, I promise.

Any comment from Samsung or Fnac would be appreciated…