Monday, April 30, 2012

Samsung Galaxy Tablet Repair

A few weeks ago, I detailed my utter frustration with TMobile and Samsung over getting my Galaxy 10 tablet fixed.

To recap, the tablet started taking forever to charge and finally stopped working entirely.  It took me the better part of two days to figure out what to do with the errant device.  TMobile and Samsung were like hardware and software vendors, bickering over whose fault the failure was (the tablet was under two months old).  Rather than replacing it, I had to send it to Samsung.

Once the near-impossible task of figuring out where the tablet was supposed to go was complete, it was actually fairly easy going.  Samsung provided me with a shipping label and I sent the device off.  Samsung was very communicative about the status of the tablet, updating me at every step of the way.  Samsung was also very communicative with me in terms of marketing garbage.  If you have to deal with people, let them know you don't want to be on their marketing list.

Within a day or so of its arrival at the service center, it got looked at and repaired.  When I say repaired, I mean they indicated that they updated the software and sent it to Shipping.  I don't know what kind of magic Samsung techs have but I am at a loss to explain how they could update any software at all on a device that flatly refused to power up.

Samsung provided a UPS tracking number and I followed the box from Mesquite, Texas.  It took a bit longer to arrive than I would have thought, largely as UPS finds it more efficient to send a package to a far-off suburb before delivery to the main city.  But it survived the hands of the World's Largest Brown-Suited Basketball Team and arrived this morning.

The tablet powered up with a loud set of horrible noises, closely followed by my loud set of horrible noises after discovering that updating software meant they blew out everything that was on the device when I had it last.

HONESTLY, backing up is the responsibility of the owner.  It's almost entirely my fault.  I don't back up to Google because Google does evil (in spite of their directive to Do No Evil).  I didn't lose anything of a serious nature but spent a ton of time getting the device back to (ab)normal.  No one asked or told me that `updating software' meant `blowing it the hell out'.

Overall, the experience has been taxing and annoying.  Samsung and TMobile get low marks for knowledge and coordination.  Samsung gets high marks for communicating the status of the device during the repair. Tmobile gets low marks for not stocking the devices or servicing them.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to put my pr0n back on the internal drive :)

1 comment:

  1. Guess I won't be buyn' one a' them bastard things anytime soon!

    ReplyDelete