Bought a 37” Samsung 5 series LCD TV on 23 Oct night with a HDMI DVD player for a total outlay of about Rs 50, 000. Called up the Samsung call centre at 1800110011 on Oct 24, saturday morning to get them to send an engineer for installation (wall mounting). Service docket no. 8412267014. Was promised a service engineer would call and come down. Well a service engineer call on Oct 27. My wife works second half of the day and wanted service before 2 pm. The service engineer rudely said they could not give a time and he could land up at anytime! We only wanted the engineer to visit before 2 pm. Is that asking for too much? On Oct 29 another engineer called up. He was more civil. Again when my wife asked him to visit before 2 pm he said they could not accede to that since they left their offices after 12 noon everyday for customer visits! No contact after that –for a Rs 50, 000 product!
I was travelling at the time. I was ruing deciding Samsung over LG and Sony. On my return, I called the customer toll free number again on Nov 1, Sunday around 4 pm. I explained the situation and asked to speak to the manager to escalate. No escalation provided, but at least had the consolation of being told sorry and that the engineer should have visited at our convenience. Was promised service the same day or worst case by noon the next. But it turned out to be just a hollow promise.
There was no contact from the Samsung or service engineer side after that. I called up the toll free no. again (know it well by now) on Nov 2, Monday around 5.15 pm. I was fed up I asked for escalation to the manager or take the TV back. Again promised a callback in 30 mins from a superior to resolve the issue. No phone call. I called back at 6.00 pm and was flatly told by this customer associate that can’t have been promised a 30 min call back as their rule is two hours. The earlier person was new and promised me something he could not! Incredible! I got mad at him. Again I told him I just did not want the TV and could he either put me on to the manager to take the TV back. He then said the manager is not around, but he’ll put me onto the technical team who would sort this out. In any case he could not raise the tech team, so it was his turn to promise me a callback in 30 mins. I could not believe it. This person had told me another one could not give me a 30 min call back assurance and he himself was giving one to me. What should I believe? I could see that I could not get anything more.
30 mins later no call. Not surprising. After 45 mins I gave a call back around 6.30 pm. They again tried to raise the technical team, could not and said they are busy with another customer and would call me back in 90 mins. I gave up. Needless to day there was no call back.
So this is my story. Samsung LCD TV bought for 50K and despite numerous promises it is not installed for 10 days and counting. Call centre is pathetic as are the service engineers who called up. Reminder me of the bad old MTNL days 15 years ago when you had to stay at home for the engineer if the phone was dead. MTNL is far better now. Service within 24 hours many times. Not Samsung. The call centre staff really take the cake. One person contradicts the other. I’ve had 4 promises from them and every one of them broken. No escalation and hence no way for a more sensitive superior or a Samsung person to defuse the situation.
Four promises made by the Samsung service team, and all four broken. Moral of the story: Do not buy Samsung unless you don’t care about customer service. And if you do, do not go by any promise the Samsung call centre makes.
No wonder Samsung trails behind LG. Samsung products may be technically better, but LG’s products are cheaper and I’ve had fantastic customer service from them. My current 29” slim is an LG and I also have an LG DVD recorder. Once I just wrote a mail on Friday late night on their website and an engineer called and came at our convenience the next day and set it right.
I guess this is a choice Samsung has consciously made. I have been browsing the net and come across lots of customer service complaints on Samsung. An IT website had an article about Zutshi’s elevation to DMD and the first 4 e-mail responses on the site were complaints. Amazing given that the forum was not for consumers.
Caveat Emptor if it is Samsung. Never again buy one and try and wean everyone from doing so too. My last act being considered is taking the TV to Samsung HQ, inviting the press, and smashing it with a hammer. I can bear the loss and may even invest the time to do so.
I now ask only for Samsung to take back the TV and reimburse me my original cost. If pushed I will even take a discount and assume the balance was donated to Samsung with a hope they would invest it in customer service.
By the way, Samsung has a service centre in the next building to my residence.
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