Samsung Assisting *********

Last week Monday my cellphone was ****** by an Uber driver. Granted the phone was forgotten on the seat of the car, however mere moments after being dropped off, we called and the phone was switched off. This means that no one other than the Uber driver could have taken the phone. I tried to phone the Uber driver, yet he did not answer my calls.I reported the situation to Uber and clearly explained that there is no other person who could have taken the phone other than the driver. Uber's response was simply, "The driver said he didn't see anything". I responded again explaining that there could be no other person that took the phone, as the phone was on the back seat of the car and the phone was switched off not even 2 minutes after the driver left, and again Uber just didn't care. Clearly Uber does not care that one of their drivers is a *****. Uber did not even bother to investigate further. I then did what any reasonable person would do, and headed to Samsung's "Find my Mobile" website and enabled the lock option as well as the track option. The Samsung site popped up a message stating that the track/lock will be in place for 12 months. Every day I logged on to the site to see if the device was switched on. Yet not even 4 days later when I logged on, I was greeted with a message stating that I have no registered devices linked to my account. Horrified, I quickly reported it to Samsung and patiently waited for them to resolve the issue.

When I didn't get a response I started getting a hold of someone through Samsung Support Live Chat and eventually a phone call. The guy on the line said that he is just a call center agent and will need to refer the matter to their "Specialized" Team for assistance. All I wanted is for the phone to be put back on my account so that I can trace the phone, and hopefully get it back. Eventually someone from Samsung phones me and claims that they received my escalation. The ask for details and I explain the situation, and asked for the phone to be added back to my account. He then uttered the most ridiculous sentence, he said "If the phone is switched off, it will not display on the site". I was at a loss for words, clearly this is not true, as I was able to initiate the track/lock after the phone was switched off and monitor the progress days after the fact. I told him that this is a lie as I saw first hand this is not how it works, He told me arrogantly "You will believe what you want to believe". I then told him that if he thinks about it logically, what he is saying does not make sense. He just repeated that this is how it works. I asked him if he had a Samsung, to which he rep**** "No"... Wait so a Samsung Employee does not even want to have a Samsung phone.... Interesting... anyway, So I asked him, if a user of a Samsung phone is to switch off their phone, will the phone be removed from the Samsung Account, to which he confidently rep**** "Yes". I ended the call, as he clearly did not know what he was talking about and started looking into getting someone else on the line. Not too long after he phoned me back and told me that the reason the phone was removed from the account is because the phone was formatted. I asked him what was the point of the website if a ******** could just format the phone to get away. He said that this is how it works. I then asked, how they could remove it from an account that has the track/lock enabled, surely the system must be able to determine that by enabling these features the device is "lost", and should not be removed from this account until the track/lock is removed. He then said that he does not know. I asked if the data is stored in a database, and wouldn't the device be flagged in the database as "lost", again he responded with he does not know. He said he will escalate to his supervisor that has technical knowledge and the supervisor will phone me back to answer the questions.

The "Supervisor" phoned me back not to long after that, and once again I explained the situation to him. He then said well the way the site works is by Samsung Account, meaning that the track will only work if the Samsung account is on the phone. I then started asking him how do they identify the device, to which he responded, by the logged in Samsung Account. I then told him what he is saying does not make logical sense, because then how do they know exactly which device is registered to my account, What happens when I have 2 phones registered with the same account. He said, it is simple the devices will be listed in the left hand side of the site, and I can then choose which one to track. But how do you distinguish between the 2 devices if you use the Account to track the devices. His response to this question was that they then use the device model. Again this does not make sense, how is this a method of identifying the phone. So I posed another scenario , what happens if I have 5 phones registered to the Samsung Account, 3 of which is Samsung S8 and 2 of which is Samsung S7, how will they then Identify the devices. To my shock he rep**** with, "It will not be possible". WOW. I asked him if a phone gets formatted are the Serial and IMEI numbers also removed. He said that they do not get removed. So I asked are the Serial and IMEI numbers unique to each phone, to which he confirmed "Yes". But why then do you not use them for identification purposes? If a phone gets formatted and registers with a new Samsung account you then have access to the *****'s details, because it will be linked with a unique identifier. He then told me he is not that technical and will have to escalate to head office for someone to contact me.

It has been 2 days since my last correspondence, and I am yet to receive a response. My take away from this experience is to stay away from Uber and Samsung. DO NOT BUY SAMSUNG products as they assist ******* in getting away. They created a service that claims to assist in the recovery of ******/lost phones, yet is outwitted by merely formatting the phone. Clearly all Samsung cares about is money, and by assisting ********* to get away, they know people will just buy a new Samsung device, bringing in more money.