Last week, reader Mike wrote to us about his frustration with Samsung and his Ultrabook’s repeated trips to Samsung’s anti-repair depot. Many companies seem to keep similar facilities, or take a more efficient route and send technicians to your home to break your gadgets without the inconvenience. When we last heard from Mike, he was talking to Samsung’s Facebook team and also to someone higher up in the customer service food chain. kept us posted in the comments to his original post, and sent us this update.

Hey Consumerist! We did it!

That email I cced you in on to [Samsung’s CEO]? That is the CEO’s email indeed, and I’m sure seeing the article and your cc finally spurred some action!

I just got a call from [redacted] from Samsung’s customer relations, and she had mentioned she was calling on behalf of Y.K. Kim. She apologized profusely and said that what I’d been through was not how Samsung handles customer relations. She also said that I’d be sent a replacement laptop, and the one they had in stock was better than mine. Me, I’m picky about parts and I wish it had the same 128gb SSD that the original Series 5 came with, but a 500gb HDD with 32gb SSD cache will do the trick just fine.

I made clear that I’m glad that seeing the facts got some action and I wished I didn’t have to kick it to the media and so high up the chain. Initially, she had asked me to send mine back in, but when I expressed some uncertainty at what kind of accidents might befall my laptop in transit (again) she checked around, and got the OK to advance-exchange it so long as I could put a credit card hold on it. I’m fine with that – I just want this ended and to have a working laptop before I go back to NO laptop.

I wish I didn’t have to go to Consumerist and execute an EECB to get a real response, but given the failure of policy, it’s good to see someone say “our policy has not worked in this instance, so it’s time to make an exception.”

I’m still skittish about Samsung laptops but I’m not so concerned anymore about my Samsung TV or a future Samsung phone/tablet purchase, at least.

Thanks for posting my story, I have a feeling that without that I wouldn’t have so swift a response.

Woohoo!

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