Dave bought his mother a Samsung digital photo frame for Christmas—Christmas a year ago, and it stopped working after just a few weeks. Since then, Dave has tried regular customer service and executive customer service, he’s waited on hold for up to 2 hours at a time, and he’s waited patiently for RMAs that are promised but never sent. Now it looks like he’s throwing in the towel: “I no longer have the time or energy to waste with them.” You win this battle, Samsung! But you do realize that Dave—a small business owner who has made large Samsung purchases in the past—will never buy another one of your products, right?

I’ve now invested more than 20 phone hours over the course of 14 months trying to get the refund Samsung promised to me for their absolutely terrible digital picture frame. And I’ve given up… they win… I no longer have the time or energy to waste with them.

I purchased their Wifi picture frame for my mom for last Christmas. I spent twice as much as I would have for the WiFi capability so I could update pictures for my parents through Flickr. Great idea. And the frame actually worked for a few weeks. But after I shipped it to my Mom and she got it set up it soon failed. She shipped it back to me and I could not get it to work. I called Samsung customer service and several of the people I spoke with could not even find the fact that Samsung sold a picture frame! That was last spring.

Since then I’ve had two replacements. Neither of them worked even out of the box. And one took 3 months to even arrive back. When I called in November I had to convince them that since the product never really worked they should give me a refund. This process took many hours of waiting on hold but I finally got ECR (Executive Customer Relations) to agree to a refund (albeit without shipping).

Three side notes:

1. 1. Executive Customer Relations’ (ECR) direct phone number is (800) 522-7341. I just got this phone number yesterday after being told repeatedly that ECR does NOT have a direct phone number and that you have to go through regular customer service every time.
2. 2. The Amazon review for this frame is fairly decent. I think it is a hoax or it is being pumped up. No one who tries to connect this thing to WiFi is going to be successful.
3. 3. Some days ECR did not even answer the phone. I was on hold a couple of times for more than 2 hours and got so sick of their music on hold that I finally hung up and decided to call back another time.

After I convinced them they needed to give a refund they said OK and an RMA label would be arriving in my email. No such luck. I did, however, start receiving their marketing email messages which I thought was very nice.

I called again in December and they had no record of my service number. Once again they promised to send me an RMA… this phone call took another 2 hours.

Nothing…

I called again Monday… admittedly a holiday for some… customer service answered… again no record of my service number. They sent me to ECR… everybody in my office complained about their hold music so I hung up after, I think, an hour.

I called again yesterday. ECR sounded miffed that I was miffed. But, once again, I was promised a refund and an RMA.

I’m done… We have bought a lot of Samsung monitors in my office. And a fair amount of other Samsung products. I’m done… they win… there are other companies and other products. I can only think that if Samsung gets rid of their pesky customers they will be much happier.

I hope this helps someone else.
Dave

(Photo: tanakawho)

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