Samsung in hot water over splashy Australian phone ads
reuters.com
reuters.com
I wish corporations would stop using the “only affects a small number” excuse. I understand the motivation behind that but feels really bad when you’re affected and you can obviously see it’s not a small number.
Why is it obviously not a small number? I mean the corps support staff are the ones who have the best picture since they're the ones getting the warranty claims.
I'm really trying not to be one of those crazy "wake up sheeple!" type crazy folk. But surely the public will wake up soon to the dangers of letting these giant megacorps run free without better regulatory oversight?
All we do is slap them on the wrist with a few million dollars of fines and say "now now! Don't do that again!". Then we wonder why fining them for less than they probably spent on the damn marketing campaign isn't deterring them from doing it all over again.
Are you talking about Samsung Fold? Because they didn't sold not even 1 of that.
You should be careful what you wish for. If companies were fined billions of dollars for faulty products, in a couple of years you'll have nothing to complain about. And not because everything will be amazing.
Just imagine if Microsoft/Apple/"Linux" was fined 1 billion for every major flaw in their OS. There would be no OSs any more, because they would all be bankrupt and nobody would dare selling anything remotely new.
Are you personally willing to accept $1 mil liability for any major flaw in the software you wrote in the past?
I don't think the end result would be clever and resourceful people being "afraid" of regulatory backlash if they screw up. Not if we demand a reform that is careful to avoid such an outcome, that is.
The way I see it, corporate systems around the world are being governed in such a way that often leads to directly rewarding bad behavior.
Humans can innovate at incredibly complicated levels. We have plenty of examples of that. I think we just need to find ways to ensure that the resulting organisations don't grow to such a size that they have an entire level of executive leadership that seeks to relentlessly drive profits at the cost of all else.
Maybe that means we as a species actually move a little bit slower sometimes? Would that be so bad? I'm probably suffering some extreme cognitive bias, but I really think that we'd be better off if that were the case.
Eh, true - but only because the test units sent out to media outlets and tech journalists started breaking[0].
> You should be careful what you wish for. If companies were fined billions of dollars for faulty products, in a couple of years you'll have nothing to complain about. And not because everything will be amazing.
> Just imagine if Microsoft/Apple/"Linux" was fined 1 billion for every major flaw in their OS. Are you personally willing to accept $1 mil liability for any major flaw in the software you wrote in the past?
I don't think that's what the parent commenter was asking for, they specifically called out the marketing claims. Which, I think, is completely fair. re: folding and waterproof devices, Samsung intentionally marketed those features of the devices and well, they don't really work. True, they never actually sold the folding devices, but it was because of the feedback from testers, not something their internal quality control caught.
I definitely don't think every software/hardware company should be fined $1M-1B for major flaws, but if you're deliberately marketing a feature which either doesn't exist (salt-waterproofing) or doesn't work (folding) either intentionally or due to QA/QC negligence on your part... I definitely think you should be fined for misleading consumers.
I won't comment on their batteries - Samsung never marketed their phones based on how safe their batteries are.
But Samsung has been repeatedly caught using stock photos from a DSLR and representing those as images captured by the cameras on their phones[1]. I'd certainly say they should be fined for that - that's intentionally misleading consumers re: the capability of the product.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/22/18510871/samsung-galaxy-f...
[1] https://petapixel.com/2018/12/05/samsung-caught-using-dslr-p...
The other two seem mostly inconsequential as long as they respect the warranty (even if they have to be compelled to do so, though that should bring a fine as well).
saved them a lawsuit I guess.
I know that iPhones and similar can survive being dropped in a pool but can you actually "use" a Samsung underwater?
Some consumers damaged their phones when exposing them to water and Samsung had refused to honor warranty claims
So can it be used in water, or not? If Samsung shows a phone being used underwater, I don't understand why it wouldn't honor a water damage claim.
I've gone swimming with it in the sea, swimming pools, washed it under tap water regularly and even dropped it in a bowl of yogurt once. YMMV of course.
My guess as to why they won't honor their warranty probably revolves around return fraud. It must be trivial to damage the waterproofing intentionally, get the phone water damaged then demand an exchange. It's such a big problem that even the Apple store where I live has much stricter return policies than they do in the US.
Earlier this year another Australian consumer won against Apple when they dropped their iPhone in a pool and it stopped working (after Phil Schiller said said you can drop it in the pool and it will be fine) https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/aiknf4/i_fought_appl...