My ordeal with Samsung plasma

MaheshN

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I purchased 42 inch Plasma TV of brand Samsung model PS42A4501MXL(s/n 07903ZES00073-Image copy enclosed) from Home Town , Noida on 27th April 2009( Cash memo copy enclosed).


1) After a day of purchase of the plasma I noticed a defect in picture display and contacted Samsung customer case. A complaint was filed and about a month later the plasma TV was replaced with a new one. I was told by the engineer that this particular model was unsuccessful and Samsung has discontinued it.

2) About 2 months after the replacement happened I noticed a vertical line on the left hand corner on the plasma display. I promptly called Samsung customer care and filed my complaint. On follow up I was told that such small aberrations are normal for the 42 inch display and It just has to be ignored. Since the line was on the left most corner and not hindering the view in any way I kept ignoring it.

3) In April 2010 I noticed that another vertical line had appeared on the display on the left half slightly aside the first vertical line. I called Samsung again filed the complaint. I received no response from Samsung and had to call the customer care repeatedly to get an engineer to visit and inspect the TV.

4) Finally an engineer visited in June 2010 and declared that the plasma display screen has gone bad. The engineer also informed me that the replacement plasma itself would have been defective and the customer care misled me into ignoring the defect.

5) Since the plasma was in warranty at the time the display started to deteriorate I filed a requested Samsung customer care to honor their commitments towards warranty and replace the unit. More and more vertical lines started appearing. By September first week there were about 8 vertical lined all over the screen.

6) My ordeal with the dishonest Samsung customer-care started at this point. I had to call almost daily to inquire about the status of replacements.

Following is the list of calls made to Samsung customer care


05April2010 Customer Care 1800110011

15April2010 Customer Care 1800110011

22July2010 Service Center Mr. Kishore 9910014646

Mr Vijay 9810998432

Mr Fazil 9560786614


09Aug2010 Customer Care Mr. Ashish Srivastava 1800110011

Ms. Sonali Thakre (Mgr customer care) (She promised that a replacement case was filed and the service center was instructed to replace the unit. She said she had written an email to service center with the instructions to replace.)


12Aug2010 Customer Care Ms. Shipra Nagpal


24Aug2010 Customer Care Mr. Shantanu Vadera


26Aug2010 Customer Care Mr. Harish


30Aug2010 Customer Care Mr. Deepak Dahal


13Sep2010 Customer Care Mr. Arnab Bose Manager Customer Care

Mr. Bose informed me that the case has been taken up for replacement of the plasma TV unit with a brand new one


02Nov2010 Customer Care Mr. Kapil Batra (informed me that someone from Samsung will get back to me, I did not get a call back)



7) In October first week the entire plasma screen went dead. We could only hear audio and the screen was blank.


It is very disappointing after having spent a huge sum on the purchase; the TV has gone bad immediately after purchase and I was misled by Samsung customer care to ignore the blemish. This is not first time I have found the Samsung product failing too soon. I had purchased DVD Writers for my PC and successively two of the DVD writers failed in a short span of less than an year. I have also enclosed the Bills in support of purchase of the DVD Writers for your information. This proves that the Samsung products are unreliable and the customer is trapped to go for expensive repair or trash the product. In this case of Plasma TV which being a very expensive product, Samsung must replace the defective TV and honor the warranty. Samsung is aware of the dwindling consumer rights prevalent in India and they take full advantage of this weakness. I am severely depressed due to this and feel betrayed and cheated.


I advise strongly against buying any samsung products and certainly not any samsung plasma TVs.

Visit my blog containing the details of my complaint.

After filing a case in district consumer court Samsung has finally refund the full amount. I received the check yesterday. I would still advice you all to stay away from samsung products.
 

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An useful message- both for the current samsung users (on how to fight it out) & for the others like me who intend to buy samsung product. Another important thing about Plasma TV is that it is very sensitive to temperature and you need to keep it cool.
 
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@MaheshN

that is a terrible ordeal you had to go through,
kudos for fighting it out till you got the refund
Thanks for sharing
It is the lack of comptition that is making these guys so arrogant
If only panasonic gets their pricing right, (50v20 cost above 1 lakh)
 
Seems like you just got a bad apple,which can happen with electronics ,for that matter any product. A product under warranty with defect should be replaced immediately but in this country warranty and customer service are a joke. You think if you bought a plasma of a another brand and found defect, things could have been any different? I doubt that. What happened with you is shocking,but you can't right off a company based on one unit,when the rest are equally rubbish......my 2 cents
 
Samsung people compare the BRAND to SONY --------INFACT they are much below even LG after this episode.

There is no doubt that SQMSUNG PRODUCTS are of inferior quality.

I have one SAMSUNG Laptop, one CRT Tv, LED TV.

I fully agree that quality is not top notch.


Very bad of u SAMSUNG
 
Seems like you just got a bad apple,which can happen with electronics ,for that matter any product. A product under warranty with defect should be replaced immediately but in this country warranty and customer service are a joke. You think if you bought a plasma of a another brand and found defect, things could have been any different? I doubt that. What happened with you is shocking,but you can't right off a company based on one unit,when the rest are equally rubbish......my 2 cents

I don't think you read my post. This is not about one unit. I have a dead plasma (now taken back by samsung), a 14'' lcd monitor, 3 dvd writers, 2 dvd players, 2 harddisk drives stacked up in my store room. And guess what brand each one of that junk is, it's SAMSUNG. And i must have read atleast a 100 other disgruntled customers lamenting about how they were cheated by the korean thugs. I am sure you would feel differently if you were on the recieving end like I am now.
 
Samsung people compare the BRAND to SONY --------INFACT they are much below even LG after this episode.

There is no doubt that SQMSUNG PRODUCTS are of inferior quality.

I have one SAMSUNG Laptop, one CRT Tv, LED TV.

I fully agree that quality is not top notch.


Very bad of u SAMSUNG

Beg to differ , I find that Samsung Video products are in fact superior to Sony in many areas - in fact Sony's exit from the Plasma area was not just to concentrate on LCD but because of (declining Plasma sales due to) not able to keep up with the improvements of Panasonic/Samsung.

On the other hand I find that the Sony full-array backlit LED with dimming is superior to the Samsung edge-lit LED with dimming. (hard to argue because the full-array back lit is superior in any case :) )
 
I don't think you read my post. This is not about one unit. I have a dead plasma (now taken back by samsung), a 14'' lcd monitor, 3 dvd writers, 2 dvd players, 2 harddisk drives stacked up in my store room. And guess what brand each one of that junk is, it's SAMSUNG. And i must have read atleast a 100 other disgruntled customers lamenting about how they were cheated by the korean thugs. I am sure you would feel differently if you were on the recieving end like I am now.

The point that Saurabh was trying to make was that this could have happened with any make/model/brand in INDIA.

If all your samsung products were crappy , then it is indeed bad luck and you should probably stay away from them, but I have had bad experiences with Seagate/Maxtor Hard drives, ViewSonic Monitors, Philips TV, Yamaha CD , Sony DVD/LG a/c, washing machines, to mention a few.

You mentioned an interest in LG (in another thread) - they are also Korean (thugs or not I don't know :D. )

I don't think the brand matters - it is the lack of consumer protection in India. In most western countries - they have no other option but to take back products for niggardly reasons. In fact some places have a 3-day automatic return policy for zero reason.

Good luck with your new purchases.
 
Seems like you just got a bad apple,which can happen with electronics ,for that matter any product....

Agree that this was just bad luck to get this particular piece.

However this is NOT about quality of product, this is about quality of service. Not replacing or repairing a product during warranty is horrible service.
 
Agree that this was just bad luck to get this particular piece.

However this is NOT about quality of product, this is about quality of service. Not replacing or repairing a product during warranty is horrible service.

I am pleasantly surprised that they capitulated at the end! Usually there is a tactic to delay it beyond the warranty expiration date and then you are SOL.
 
My experience was similar (as posted earlier on this forum). My Samsung Plasma went Kaput within 1 week and it turned out to be a used piece that was shipped from company itself.

Samsung did not have parts to fix it (power supply). And had to escalate it pretty high to get a refund.
 
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