Last Christmas, I received a Samsung cell phone as gift. It came with a warranty card that asked me to enter my contact information, the product’s model number, serial number … etc. I could not know where I bought the phone, and wrote gift on the box that asked me where I bought the phone.
My bad dream began a few weeks ago when I took the phone to Samsung’s Hong Kong agent for repair. They insisted to see a receipt of the purchase if I wanted free warranty service. If not, then I must pay them $1,500.
I tried explaining to the Samsung agent that the phone was a gift. It would be embarrassing for me to ask the person who gave me the phone to get me a receipt. This person already left Hong Kong. It’s unlikely that he would still have the receipt. He probably couldn’t even remember where he bought the phone. Unfortunately, the Samsung agent insisted that it’s either paper receipt or no free service.
Receipts are nothing but a record that confirms information about the payment of goods and services actually takes place. When we lived at an analog age, receipts were in paper. We now live in a digital age. There is no excuse that Samsung cannot retrieve a digital record of the purchase of my cell phone. I can only conclude that:
· The global brand that Samsung aspire is a sham,
· Samsung do not expect people buy their products as gifts, in which case they should put a warning sign on their products,
· The agent Samsung use in Hong Kong has a dirty deal going on with their principles to keep a backward operation at the expense of consumers, or
· The warranty card is a purely a ploy to for Samsung to send me junk mail. The last thing in Samsung’s mind is to give customers a decent after-sales service.
I own appliances by Sony, Philips, Lenovo, Buffalo, HP … etc. When I call them for service, the only information they want is the phone number I put on the warranty cards.