Let lose the dogs of war…
Well, as anyone who reads this knows, I’m no stranger to corporate conflict. I’ve caused it many a time because I wind up with faulty products or services and want something done, but I encounter a level of incompetence beyond any belief. For more details, see my posts on Verizon
Verizon… Aggrivating Customer service…. The usual.
Verizon… More aggrivating customer service… Part II…
Well, now it comes to it, and I’m tackling Samsung. Why? For selling me a camera that doesn’t work like it should. You can pretty much extrapolate the details in the following letter that I just sent off, so enjoy as it’s my corporate ranting at its finest.
I am writing this e-mail because I have utterly reached the end of my rope with your company. In February, I purchased an SC-D353 Video camera for many reasons. It was cost effective for what I needed, and it could run with either the Mini-DV Tapes or Memory Stick. I mostly purchased it for the memory stick capability, because I do some video editing on my computer and it is more time effective than having to transfer the videos via Firewire.
Well, after careful research to make sure that I was going to be picking up the right product, I went to my electronics retailer in late March and purchased a 1 GB Sandisk memory stick for the camera. I was shocked, however, when I discovered that while it allowed me to take pictures, it wouldn’t allow me to record video. My first thought was, being as it was a brand new camera, that there was obviously something wrong with the brand of memory stick I had purchased, so I returned it to the retailer and exchanged it for a 1 GB Sony memory stick. Sony, after all, created the technology, so their product would have to work. But again, the memory stick would only allow me to take pictures, but locked up on video.
Around March 22nd, I called tech support, went through tier 1 with no change, was bumped up to tier 2, which had me send in my camera (at cost to me, mind you). Shawn in tier 2 was quite helpful in denoting that what my camera was doing, it wouldn’t have been doing, because according to everything posted on your website, it should have worked. So I sent the camera in to the Secaucus, NJ facility by UPS shipping.
It was here that the trail of incompetence began. I checked daily for updates on my camera, to no avail. I finally, after two weeks, called tech support again, and they said they had no idea what was going on with the camera and to call back in a week. I called back one week later, and Matt in tier 2 was kind enough to call the repair facility to find out what was going on. I called back the next day and he let me know that the repair facility had my camera, but was awaiting a part that was on back order. I would not have minded so terribly had they just come out and said, “We have a part that’s on backorder, we’ll probably need your camera about a month.” I continued to check in until the camera finally shipped out, and returned to me a mere week before I needed it to take on a trip to my best friend’s college graduation.
When I finally received the camera back around May 5th, I opened the box, plugged it in, and reinserted my memory stick. I then tried recording to my memory stick, and imagine my irritation when I discovered, it still was not working. It would seem I was going to have to record my friend’s graduation on tape instead of on stick.
Frustrated, I called back Matt in tier 2 and explained my problem, as calmly as I could. He told me he would contact the chief technician and call me or e-mail me back. So I waited, patiently, for two days, with not a peep from Matt. So I called him back again. Matt had heard back from the technician, and the technician’s question put me on the border of screaming.
“Did he reformat the memory card?”
Surely, the technician had to have been joking. I had to go through two tiers of tech support to get to this point, and both of them as a troubleshooting question asked me to try formatting the memory card. The first thing I tried when I got the camera back was reformatting the memory card. And that’s the best the chief technician can come up with? Did I reformat the memory card?I politely explained to Matt that I had indeed tried reformatting the memory card (several times), with no results different from before. Matt told me again that he would call the technician back and then either call or e-mail me with any other issues.
That was over one week ago, before I left on a 9 day vacation to see my friend graduate from college.
Now, I had my cell phone with me at all times, and I was checking my e-mail the entire trip. Had Matt tried getting a hold of me, I would’ve known about it. I even decided to avoid pestering him too much while I was on my vacation to give him and the technician time to work things out. But now, here I sit at my computer, with no e-mails and no messages on either my home or cell phone that explain what is wrong with my camera.
To put it bluntly, I am at my wit’s end. I sit here with a camera that should be functioning properly but, for mysterious reasons known only to the technicians, it doesn’t. I have been trying for TWO months now to get this remedied, to no avail. You have two options, from how I see it: You can either figure out and repair what it is that is making my camcorder not function as you advertise in a timely manner, or you can replace my camcorder with one that will function as advertised, with a 1 GB memory stick.
In your website’s own words, Samsung’s goal is to “devote our human resources and technology to create superior products and services, thereby contributing to a better global society.” At present, I’ve found your human resources to be lacking (particularly your chief technician, both tiers of tech support seem to be doing their job and then some to me, lack of follow ups aside), and your product far from superior, as I doubt had I purchased a similar camera from Cannon or Sony that I would have had nearly as much trouble. My entire family owns Samsung phones, and I had been considering purchasing a Samsung flat panel LCD monitor, but if this is the kind of service and product I can come to expect from your company, I will cease to consider you for any future business or personal purchases.
Updates as they come…