Samsung South Africa, a bunch of *******...

Would rate Samsung -5 stars if I could. I had a Samsung Blu-ray home theater system which worked absolutely fine for just under 2 years. Then in June, it all of a sudden started giving a problem where it would keep looping through the boot cycle, rendering it unusable. I contacted Samsung and was told to take the player in to the service center at The Wedge shopping center in Sandton, which I did on 18 June. Since then it was an uphill battle to follow up on what was going on with the repair. I had to constantly be contacting them instead of the other way around. From looking online I also discovered that this was a common problem globally for Samsung Blu ray players, Samsung released some software update or something to that effect which essentially bricked the players.

The service center eventually, almost a month later told me that it cannot be repaired as the motherboard was damaged and the part required to fix it was obsolete. They said they will send it to Samsung head office who will process an exchange. Another few weeks of waiting with little to no contact unless I chased them up, and they eventually informed me that they do not have stock for an exchange. They then said that they will refund me for the purchase price of the unit.

I was told on 9th July that the refund will take 4-6 weeks. At the time of writing this complaint, 7 weeks have passed, still no refund and no forthcoming communication from Samsung. I have called numerous times, to which I am told the matter will be escalated to management, and email will be sent to the relevant department, etc, but to no avail. I even went so far as to contact the CEO's office, and all the response I got was that it will be escalated, yet, 3 days later, I am still sitting with no refund nor any idea on what exactly is going on and why I haven't been paid MY MONEY yet!

I have even mentioned on recent emails that I will be taking up the matter with the Consumer Affairs office should I not receive a timely response, and I am now going to proceed as such. I will never touch Samsung products ever again, no doubt, they make some nice stuff, but for this kind of customer service, Samsung is not worth a cent.

The way I see it with the events over the past few months, they are basically a bunch of *******, happy to take your money and even to be so daft as to brick a perfectly working home theater system, but when it comes time to pay up for damages caused by THEM, they will shirk for months, essentially, keeping you, the customer, out of pocket...while they hold on tightly to YOUR money...just like a ***** would.