Seriously, if I could give - stars I would! Terrible customer service, terrible at taking accountability for problems, and even worse understanding of the problems real people face!!! After all, I paid them to put a tv on the wall because I'm not strong enough to put it up myself. And yet they wouldn't even replace a four hour old faulty tv because they couldn't take it down again!
OK - so bought a big tv from Samsung, why wouldn't I buy from them? They're the brand owners, and I will get the best experience even if I pay a little more surely!! So buying from them was a real treat to myself and family.
Bit of a fuss about delivery - delivery and installation teams are different, and delivery team was delayed so installation team didn't think they could do it, but we got there in the end.
Installation team arrived and installed the tv on the wall - too big for me to do (I am not young!) at which point we discovered tv was faulty.
Spent about 3.5 hours on the phone and chat to Samsung, and believe it or not:
- they wouldn't be able to replace my tv for about 2 weeks after it had been returned to their warehouse for checking (the tv hadn't even been on my property for 4 hours yet!)
- they wouldn't be able to help me get it off the wall because they don't have engineers that can do that
- it was too big for me to take off the wall myself - which is why I paid them to install it - but if i couldn't get it off the wall, they couldn't help me and I would need to live with a faulty tv.
I escalated my query, and was turned away at every stage. They didn't have anyone who could help me remove it from my wall, and my brand new tv would need to stay on the wall - unusable - because they wouldn't refund me or replace the faulty tv without having the tv back at the warehouse.
Eventually I got onto a competitor and got the tv from them, for delivery the next day. It did mean I now had two tvs on my credit card though, and was duly penalised because I had gone over my credit limit. Guess what - Samsung did not refund me particularly quickly.
Currys arrived (on time, no problem).
The Currys delivery team did the installation (no problem).
The Currys delivery team did not have to make lots of extra holes in my wall as they didn't put the mounting in the wrong place first time. Samsung - you need to be sure your engineers are fully trained!
The Currys team took my faulty tv off the wall and put it in the box for return. Thank you Currys team. You were absolutely faultless and your service was impeccable. In complete contrast to my experience with Samsung!!
Samsung then collected the faulty tv and - even though I had escalated to the CEO team, and I'm not sure I would recommend anyone do that, I don't believe the CEO actually sees any of that and the team aren't actually empowered to resolve anything.
By the time the tv was refunded, it wasn't refunded in full. As far as Samsung were concerned, they had done the delivery and installation so wouldn't refund that. (Why would I pay £74 for delivery and installation of a faulty tv?)
More time wasted sorting that out, and they eventually refunded that.
I then pointed out that I had paid a credit card fee of £12 because they took so long to refund, so they offered me £90 worth of Samsung vouchers to spend on their site.
Question: why would I spend any money with Samsung ever again??? There is nothing on their website for £90 that I want or need... and I would need to add more money to that to spend... and I don't want to buy from Samsung again. Eventually they gave me Sainsburys vouchers, which is a good solution but does it make me want to ever buy from them again when it took me a month to get my original money back, and were prepared to leave me with a faulty tv because they couldn't help me get it off the wall when they put it up there in the first place? Not at all! Very sour taste in my mouth.
I highly recommend that if you are thinking of buying from Samsung directly you look at alternative arrangements. Currys (and no, I have no connection with them but they were absolutely amazing after the pain I had with Samsung) offered infinitely better service and I am more convinced about their ability to meet my needs as a customer.
Samsung, my advice to you is to stop selling with customers directly. You are just letting yourself down as you've put me off the brand completely!