Samsung TVs and their customer service - a tale of caution

We bought an LCD TV about 2 1/2 years ago, in November of 2008. It was a Samsung LN40A650. We figured it would be worth spending a little extra for something that should last us a good while and will be used almost daily, and thought it was really awesome. Christina's parents bought a similar model because of our recommendation, and her grandmother also has a Samsung TV now.

We did buy an extended warranty for the TV, which we did not end up using, and I later read that it's not recommended to get them for LCD TVs. Well, we should have gotten an even longer one, because a few months ago, the TV started to have some serious picture issues. The left 3/4 of the screen were very dark and blurry, and it looked like each image was retained for 20 seconds, and all the images overlayed, causing the blur and dark picture. After a few minutes it would simply go away in a blink, but over time it started to take longer and longer, until about 3 weeks ago it just would not snap out of it anymore, and the thing was just unwatchable altogether.

Around the same time, Christina's parents' TV, a very similar model bought around the same time as ours, as mentioned above, had the same exact problem. Lucky for them, it was still protected by an extended warranty, and they were able to fix it in two attempts. I think they ended up having to replace the panels, which is a repair that usually costs more than buying a brand-new set. We were told our TV would require an equally expensive repair.

So crap, this can't just be a coincidence we thought. I looked up reviews and forum posts about ours and other Samsung TVs, and there seem to be quite a few problems with Samsung TVs, though our problem wasn't the most common. Of course searching for issues with any brand will yield a lot of bad reviews, given people's tendency to leave more negative than positive feedback, and this post only confirms that. But! I found many more complaints about Samsung than any of the other major brands, and even some describing our exact problem. One person even seemed to have found a homemade fix, which I will not dare to try myself. On consumeraffairs.com there are plenty of negative accounts about any brand, but Samsung is the only one that made it necessary for them to not just have the regular complaints page, but also two separate articles on the problems people are facing with these TVs. I also noticed that there were significantly more Samsung TV complaints added for the current year than for Sony or LG. In other words, they seem to be selling junk TVs at premium prices.

So at this point, I was pretty upset. Christina and I both have Samsung phones as well, she has a Samsung laptop, and her Granny even has a washer and dryer from them. My brother bought a TV from them some years ago, and we have several friends who also have Samsung TVs. So I was hoping that maybe their customer service department would be able to provide some information or help. Everybody else seemed to chuckle at the idea, but I thought it was worth a shot. I mean, aren't corporations supposed to care about loyal, long-term customers who recommend electronics to their friends and family? Even though the customer service agent and her manager were friendly and knowledgeable, Samsung's policies did not allow them to make any efforts whatsoever to try to keep me as a customer or alleviate my problem with their product. Nothing at all. This wasn't even bad customer service technically, since nothing was done at all. And offering to schedule an appointment for service does not count. They could have offered to help me with the cost of the repair, offered a discount for purchasing a new Samsung TV or any kind of other little gesture just to show that they understand I was a good customer of theirs, and they regret my bad experience. But their lack of effort is just laughable. So not only do they sell sub-par products, they also refuse to stand behind their products. Which actually confirms their lack of faith in their products. I guess I should not have expected the TV to last much beyond the manufacturer's warranty, let alone 10 years, which I thought was the minimum it would be with us.

I realize that I'm making sweeping generalizations about Samsung products based on my one bad experience. Some of the things I found on the internet confirm my opinion, but of course I was looking at it with a strong bias. And I wouldn't be so upset about this had their customer service at least made some sort of effort, but the bottom line is that they couldn't care less whether or not I ever bought another product of theirs again in my life (and I can assure you that I will not), and that they don't seem to be very confident in the quality of their TVs. Where are those one million Twitter followers when you need them?

All thanks to the awesome power of commercials

Let's see a show of hands for people who like getting a song stuck in their head that they don't like. Anyone? Okay, I'm going to assume that everyone kept their hand down purposefully, and did not accidentally have them glued to the table. It's okay, we've all been there. And superglue is an underestimated menace. Especially when you stick something to a wall with it, as you risk tearing down the whole wall when trying to pry it off with a truck and some chains. At least that's what I remember from the ads. But it's even worse if it's not a real song, but just a jingle from a commercial. It also sucks when commercials try to use some catchy song, and then have the artist's info at the bottom so you can relive the awesome moment of watching that commercial by purchasing the song and become part of the community. It's hard to tell for me how much this is a calculated move, and how much is just coincidence, and I believe my fellow countrymen will remember a certain Bacardi commercial in horror. Or maybe not, judging by how popular that song was. But there have been two commercials recently, where the use of well-known songs did not completely annoy me, but reminded me that I hadn't listened to them, and the albums they're on, for way too long.

The first one was that Tuesday afternoon one (I think the proper title would be: The Afternoon: "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)") from "Days of Future Passed" by the Moody Blues, and the other is "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed off the "Transfomer" album. Both are really great albums I think, even though the somewhat indulgent classical parts on "Days of Future Passed" had to grow on me a little bit, and there are disappointingly few songs about shape-shifting robots on Lou Reed's album.

Eating dirt

I can't even imagine how much people are suffering in Haiti right now, and the fact that the destruction prevents much-needed help to arrive make this so much more tragic. PBS repeated this report yesterday, which serves as a reminder of how wealthy we all are and how much Haitians have already been suffering every day before the recent earthquake.

Who will make them leave their keys?

It's not hard to dislike Oprah. I have, involuntarily, seen my fair share of the dribble that passes as true concern and compassion, and wondered about the short attention span, that I'm not sure if it was born out of the perceived necessity to always cover the newest and the latest, or out of the desire to devise a grand marketing scheme. Nothing they ever talk about seems to last longer than a week. One day Oprah announces she is done with dieting and accepts her body the way it is, which I thought was great considering that she didn't appear to be entirely unhealthy. And the next thing you know she is bawling about having fallen off the wagon yet again. The conversation on her show seem utterly insincere to me, in desperate attempts to be deep and meaningful. I like to think that it wasn't always that way, but that she has simply been on the job for way too long.

Enter Wendy Williams. The way I see it, because of the way she revels in superficiality and irrelevance, strangely enough, she ends up being much more sincere than Oprah. And I think it's because there is no pretense about being pretentious, which sounds like such a tired cliche but in the wide world of TV talk shows should be considered poetic.

And so the other day we saw Gloria Gaynor performing on the Wendy Williams show, the audience was dancing and everyone was having fun, and I said something to the effect of "Can you imagine what this would have been like on Oprah?" to Christina. And using her best Oprah impression of how she announces celebrity guests that she is really excited about, Christina goes "Glo-ria Gay-neeeeer" (yes, it is spelled with an o, but not the way Christina's imitation of Oprah has it). And that completely cracked me up. You had to be there to appreciate it, but as an eyewitness, let me tell you: It was hilarious.

Verbraucherinformationen.

Call it a last resort, but I'm gonna have to talk about advertising again. There are actually three instances of stupid commercials I noticed.

The first one is for milk made by Smart Balance, and in it they talk about how horrible regular milk is for you and that Smart Balance's low fat and no-fat milk is so much better. I'm sorry, but if you believe that, you got something wrong with you. Regular 4% milk is not bad for you. Milk that has been engineered in a lab to contain all kinds of things that aren't in it to begin with and to not contain other things, now that doesn't sound wholesome to me at all. No-fat milk? You gotta be kidding! I know I talked about milk on here before, but I just want to point out that the difference in the amount of fat in 2% and 4% is pretty much insignificant. If you're really concerned about your fat intake, get some extra lean hamburger instead of the 80-20 chuck and NO MORE CORN DOGS! That will actually make a difference. While it's not a bad idea to watch what you eat, these types of manufactured foods just can't be good for you.

Also, have you seen the latest Hallmark Hannah Montana Recordable Valentine's Day Card commercial? It features some elementary school girls at lunch, and the first two show the Valentine's Day gifts their moms, possibly with lots of painstaking effort and love, have made for them at home. It's something like a heart-shaped sandwich and something red. The idea of mothers giving something to their daughters for Valentine's Day strikes me as Hallmark wishful thinking already, but okay, if they can make up holidays, they can make up the rules too, that's only fair. The third girl in the ad is much luckier than the first two. Rather than spending time thinking of and making something unique for her, her mom went to the store and bought a Hallmark Hannah Montana card, recorded her voice saying "I love you, sugar" on it (or something to that effect), put it in the envelope and BAM! all done. Now you see why the first two girls are jealous of the third one. It's really not fair of mom #3 to put her daughter in a position that is sure to generate copious amounts of jealousy and envy.

And finally, do you want to know who I think is a real prick? The french fries on McDonald's dollar menu. If you've seen the commercials you know what I'm talking about. What is your deal? First dissing the cheeseburger, then that lame joke about the apple pies. Nobody wants to be your friend, $1 french fries.

I got one more thing, unrelated to commercials, but related to shopping, so it's not completely unrelated since commercials are supposed to influence your shopping habits. We go to this grocery store that belongs to a chain called Stop & Shop, and last time we went there they had this new drink, or at least it was the first time I noticed it, that's one of those generic store brand items. I'm not entirely sure what it's imitating, but I think it's those "flavored water" types, that are still clear, but have a hint of some fruit flavor. Not my thing, but anyway, they call the drink "Zazz". Which is funny if you watch Metalocalypse. Well, it is to me anyway.

The truth and nothing but the truth.

The other day we heard an advertisement for a movie on the radio. And you know how some movies can't really fend for themselves, so the best way the advertisers can think of to promote the movie is to compare it to similar ones, in the hope that it appeals to the same target audience. As in "Star Trek fans will love this" or "Even funnier than Cheaper by the Dozen". Yeah, they try to make it sound good by association, which is already pretty lame.

However, the movie we heard advertised, and I don't have the slightest idea what it is called, what it is about, who made it or who is in it, is better than the last two Ocean's Eleven movies. Just the last two. Not the first one, oh no siree, only better than Ocean's 12 and 13, but not better than Ocean's 11. You got that? Cause we don't wanna get into any trouble here for false advertising or nothing when people realize our movie is actually not as good as Ocean's 11. It's a pretty good movie, don't get us wrong, but when you compare it to Ocean's 11, well it just falls short of the mark. And this is so obvious that we couldn't possibly have gotten away with claiming it anyway, so we opted for the truth. Love that integrity. People, we tried to make a good movie here, and you can check our website for a complete list of movies it's better than, but when it came to Ocean's 11 (just the first one though), we watched the two again and again, but in the end it was all too noticeable, that Ocean's 11 is better. But it's really awesome, right? So go ahead, watch our movie, it might be almost really awesome.

That also reminds me of that movie advertising strategy where they quote reviews, and with some you can tell they were having trouble finding anything good written about the movie anywhere, and so the quotes are kinda generic and unenthusiastic. I think the above movie was actually quoting a review, but I'm not sure anymore.

Also, have any of you seen the recent K-Mart commercials? The ones where the family opens Christmas presents, and the kids get this stuff they really love, and Dad freaks out because that must have been really expensive? Well, Dad can relax, cause this isn't the fancy Hannah Montana pajamas from the mall. Nope, this is that cheap stuff. From K-Mart. What was he thinking?

Got Rooney?

No, this is not a soccer post. Because on this blog, we're too good for English players. Way too good. I saw this on 60 Minutes today, and even though it's from 2005, it seems to speak right from the bottom of my heart. The problem as Mr Rooney describes it still persists, too: I challenge you to go to a grocery store and find plain old milk. The closest you'll get it Vitamin D milk, which I grudgingly accept since Vitamin D isn't all that bad for you. I just saw something on TV explaining how the Vitamin D in milk isn't having a huge impact on your overall vitamin household though. Yoghurt is even worse in this country. It's all low-fat and no-fat and diet and eat-me-and-you'll-poop-like-a-champ white goo with either loads of sugar or artificial sweetener (don't even get me started on that one). But where's regular old yoghurt? It's hard enough to find plain and the "greek-style" ones seem to be a little better, but I haven't sampled them extensively due to their no-bargain price tag. I just settle for low-fat ones and try to feel smug. The other day we saw some no-fat processed cheese slices that weren't actually called cheese anymore but food substitute. How can consumers be demanding this? Buttermilk's another good one. What happened to buttermilk? It's popular with eco-fanatics and alternative types all over Germany, but over here, all they have is low-fat buttermilk. That to me is an oxymoron to begin with. I also noticed that school cafeterias and government-sponsored diet advice promotes 2% milk. But you know what I'm really wondering? What the heck happens with all the fat they remove from dairy products. I'm imagining gigantic underground lakes of dairy fat or mountains of the stuff, covered with equally enormous tarps and sold back to the people as fancy bouncing castles. Or smaller versions marketed as insoles containing only 100% natural materials.

New York state of mind...

With all the amazing things happening in our enviable lives you're probably wondering why I find it necessary to even mention this, but I got a job in New York City. I've been applying all over, since we didn't really care that much where we'd end up, and got an offer for a job in Manhattan, which I accepted. Now I'm just waiting for the visa stuff to happen, and then we'll be moving up there. I will have to go back to Germany first to get the visa, but I knew that was coming. Now New York wasn't exactly our number one choice on the list of places to live, but I think it'll be pretty exciting and, if nothing else, a good experience. Anyway, I'm not really in a writing mood, vegetable soup is calling my name (even though it has a slight speech impediment which makes us laugh every time), and there is a football game on. Do I like football? Well, it's alright I guess, and beats the Andy Griffith show any day of the week.