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Comment by chinhodado | Hacker News Reader

Props to Samsung. They reacted fast to the incidents, quickly announced recalls and worked hard to convince people to return their devices, launched in depth investigation, identified the problem and made changes to their processes.

If the result of the investigation is correct then they have different flaws in both the original and new batteries, which is quite unfortunate. The fiasco costed them something like $17B so they can't afford to have it happen again.

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?????

I'm having trouble thinking of a more poorly organized recall in consumer electronics:

- Samsung initially refused to work with US regulators (CPSC) to coordinate a recall.

- They didn't communicate to customers the danger of the situation until after people got burned and there was widespread media coverage.

- They didn't work with carriers to allow returns in stores. People who bought their Note 7's through their carriers weren't clear on how they could return the phone. In some cases, the store employees even told customers that they couldn't swap the device.

- For those who managed to swap their phones, the replacement had the same issue. They had a defective battery because they rushed Note 7 develpment -- you'd think they would have learned not to rush the recall...

The handling of the recall outside the US was even worse. For instance, after reports of exploding phones started circulating in China, Samsung claimed that the phones distributed in that country were not defective, and insinulated that the owners had deliberately mistreated the devices:

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/09/20/samsungs-attem...

To be fair, they probably didn't expect their other supplier of batteries to have another, totally different flaw that caused those batteries to catch fire too.

When you ship a product to millions of customers, you don't "expect" or assume anything. You have your own people, on your payroll, test parts before they get used.

If you can define a testing regimen that would have caught this issue, I'm sure Samsung would gladly pay you in suitcases of cash.

My friend in Germany is still waiting to get his money back, that's how swift Samsung's response is.

I'm also waiting a.) for my money b.) someone to get my Note7. They've sent twice someone without packaging material who wouldn't take the Note, then never react to my inquiries. Samsung customer support in Germany was one of the worst I've ever experienced.

Unfortunately the fast return after first recall seems to be the cause of the second recall.

In some respects it was well handled. But in others it was horrifically bad. Same here. I was admittedly in the strange situation of having moved countries after I purchased the phone, but the kafkaesque hell I ended up in (about 5 emails, 4 online chat sessions and 8 phone calls all probably totalling 12 hours of my time) nearly drove me crazy. And much of the craziness was due to deliberate deception on Samsung's part - see below for an interesting read about how Samsung forced it's call center staff to lie to their customers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyNote7/comments/5kq6x2/discuss...

Bullshit! the facts state exactly opposite.

no replacement or refunds for half of customers, lack of communication with public, false statements and lies. they even removed videos from youtube!

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