Samsung galaxy active watch is a ****

I bought a Samsung smar****ch “galaxy active” a little over a year ago and I’ve loved the watch and had no issues until the 3rd of April when the watch screen just went blank. Initially thought it was just maybe out of battery and put it in the charger but the screen remained black however the watch was still operational as I could connect it to my phone and it was still tracking my steps,sleep, heart rate etc. I went on the Samsung website and found a lot of complaints on the very same issue on the same watch , some people mentioned they were able to resolve by hard resetting the watch while others had to send back the watch as the hard reset did not help.I contacted Samsung on the 4th on twitter and was advised to take it to the service centre in the cbd.

I took the watch in on the weekend and was surprised at having to pay R300 (watch was over a year and out of warranty) just for them to assess the watch but I paid anyway and was told I’d receive feedback within 48hrs counting from the Monday as assessments weren’t done on weekends.

Thursday came and I had not received any feedback , I called the number on the receipt I was given , the person who answered asked for my job number and then promised to call me back within 5minutes but I received no call from them and it was the long weekend so waited til the next Tuesday to call again and then to my shock I was told I would need to pay R3000 to repair the watch , now I had paid R3000 to buy the watch so it made no sense to me and I raised that with them. When I asked what was damaged , I was told the watch had water in it , but the watch is swim proof and has a ip68 rating. The only water my watch goes in contact with is at the virgin active pool which is 1,2m so I don’t understand how this would’ve caused a problem considering the rating and watch being swim proof, the person could not answer.

Anyway I did not agree on paying R3000 to repair the watch as I could buy a new watch with the same amount. I made arrangements to collect the watch which I now have with me but the watch now does not work completely .when I took in the watch it worked , I could connect to my phone , it charged , it still tracked my activities but now it’s just dead ! I don’t know what they did to it. It’s so disappointing as I really loved this watch and it had everything I wanted from a watch but the service at Samsung is just bad. They have now basically forced me to have to pay them 3k as the watch is completely dead now and can’t be used and I need it as it was a big part of my health goals.