The story of a customer who was denied warranty repair of his foldable has made noise: what happened and why it's not good news
Samsung would have found a clever (but also attackable) method to avoid warranty repair claims on which the company has no responsibility.
In short, Seoul would like to cut all those costs incurred so far related to non-legitimate requests from customers, but what's causing discussion on the web is the way found to do it.
In Korea, right there where Samsung has its roots, has received a major media echo the case of a customer who saw the display of his brand new foldable smartphone suddenly stop working. Nothing surprising: it shouldn't, but it can happen. The real annoyance the consumer felt when the company's assistance wanted to deny him free warranty service because of the falls suffered by the smartphone, whose connection with the "death" of the display may be there but is still to be proved. The customer got off lightly, but the fact opens up uncomfortable prospects for other Samsung customers.
The "sentinel" sensors of Z Flip3
For companies, the game of profits is also and above all played on costs. Reducing them as much as possible is the imperative, even if it means displeasing some customers, as the Korean media reported. In the place where Samsung's headquarters are located, the case of a customer whose display of his new Galaxy Z Flip3 stopped working made the headlines.
When he went to the service center to request warranty work, the unsuspecting customer discovered that the company now saves the stresses recorded by the accelerometers in the smartphone's memory, so that he can check at the right time (as in the case of warranty work) if the smartphone has previously fallen and how many times it has done so.
The Korean customer's Galaxy Z Flip3 had tasted the floor three times before the display abandoned it, so Samsung's technicians objected to the free repair, pointing to the company's new regulations.
The case, however, was resolved in a positive way because the smartphone was in the first 14 days of life in which the right of withdrawal applies, so it still received the free repair, but this could represent a heavy precedent towards those who own a Galaxy Z Flip3 but also a Z Fold3, for which Samsung probably arranged the same kind of solution.
The possible implications for the future
Or at least that's what the Korean media is claiming almost in chorus, and now the fear could extend to all of Samsung's other smartphones as well. All have one or more accelerometers, so if Samsung after this "experiment" on the two new foldable decides to do the same on all other Galaxy smartphones, then in the future a fall could be enough to be denied a warranty repair.
It is clear that if the intervention is required for a product with a spider web fracture on the display, it is understandable that Samsung wants to somehow check if the cracks have formed due to a manufacturing defect or due to careless use by the customer. But the hope is that it doesn't become an excuse to deny expensive repairs for which the customer bears no responsibility.