The Case Of The Disappearing Samsung Television, Will It Ever Be Found?

What do you do when Samsung is supposed to ship you a replacement TV, but all you get is a list of excuses?

Samsung can’t tell reader Marta which carrier shipped her replacement TV or provide her with a tracking number. The TV can’t be located in the retail warehouse that Samsung says they sent it to, and they won’t authorize the warehouse’s owner to give her a different, identical TV. This has been going on for 4 months.

Here’s Marta’s letter:

All I want is my TV!

Hi there, do I ever have a tale of customer service gone awry.

This past April I bought what I thought was a beautiful big screen Samsung LCD flat screen TV. (47″ LCD LNS4696) I took it home and loved it, until it died on me two months later. The back light was dead. Now I had volume but no picture. On June 18th I called the customer service people from The Brick, Transglobal Services. They sent a tech out the following day. The tech found the problem and a part was ordered. By mid August, still having no working TV I was told that the part was stuck in Korea and so Samsung will provide me a replacement. On August 29th I was offered a replacement TV by Samsung directly. I accepted the offer and asked how long it will take to get it to me. I was told about 2 weeks.

I asked whether they could simply authorize the Brick to give me one out of their stock (they had lots of the replacement models in stock) and was told that it would be much faster and better to simply take the one they were going to ship as the paperwork to authorize the Brick to give me one would take a month or more. So I said o.k.

By mid September, still no TV and no news from Samsung, the Brick or Transglobal. I called all three, got passed around to various people at various levels of authority. Finally I was told that it takes Samsung 14 days to process the order (before they ship it). No one told me that in August. I then inquired how long it takes to get it to me. I was told 5 or 6 days. Two weeks go by, still no TV.

On October 4th I again contacted Samsung, Transglobal and the Brick. No one knew where the TV was. No one could even tell me what shipping company it was sent with. Later that day, having heard nothing, I called again. By this time there are probably 10 to 15 different people “working on it” for me. Finally, someone at Samsung was able to tell me that the TV was shipped on September 20th, which was two weeks earlier. Of course, not knowing who they shipped it with, we had a useless tracking number that wasn’t from Canpar, Purolator, UPS, FedEx or any other shipper that I could think of to suggest to Samsung to check. I again asked that they allow The Brick to replace it. They tell me they can’t do that until they find out where the TV is.

Again, I was told they would keep looking. The following day, still having heard nothing I call Samsung again. They tell me that they had located the TV and that it was delivered to a Brick warehouse in Mississauga. I live in Ottawa, 6 hours away so that is still no good to me. They did tell me that someone would call me for a delivery date shortly. Having had the runaround for months, I ask for the number to the warehouse so I could call. They don’t have a number. They tell me to talk to The Brick store and they’ll get me in touch.

I then go to the Brick and a wonderful customer service woman gets on the phone. She experienced the same runaround as I did and spent an hour and half on the phone trying to find the TV for me and to get Samsung’s permission to simply give me one out of the back store room given that I was standing right there.

Samsung refused, saying the TV they sent is the TV I can have, and it has to be that specific one, notwithstanding that they have tons of the same model in the back – all they needed was a P.O. number authorizing the exchange. That was met with a resounding “no”.

It’s now October 9th and no one has been able to even physically locate the TV in Mississauga so that it can be shipped to me. I haven’t had use of it in 4 months and have only owned it for 6 months. Samsung has done nothing to assist me, and only wasted hours and hours of my time.

Please help!! I need some suggestions from your readers on how to proceed! Has anyone else gotten a 4 month runaround from Samsung?

Thanks again,

Marta S.

Let’s see. Yes, we have heard of the Samsung runaround before. We’re going to recommend the Executive Email Carpet Bomb in this case. You’re caught between two companies pointing fingers. Feel free to escalate your complaint with both companies, but it seems to us that Samsung should have shipped the TV to you directly, and it was their mistake to ship it to the wrong address.

It might even be time to start whispering “small claims court,” but since you’re in Canada, we’ll turn the mic over to our many fine Canadian commenters.

(Photo:nomad73)

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