Galaxy Note 7 came and soon left in flames. Samsung tried to fix massive problems the model faced, but the company decided to stop the production of the phone and to withdraw all units because of the explosive attitude the Note 7 shown.
The Guardian reported that a number of Galaxy Note owners stated that Samsung refused to pay them full compensation for properties that ended up damaged by the phone. One owner, John Barwick stated that he was woken in the middle of the night, soon realizing that his Note 7 started to catch fire. At the end, John ended with a destroyed phone as well as damaged furniture including his carpet, bed, curtains and a nightstand. Total damage caused by Note 7’s explosion was around $9,000. When Barwick tried to make Samsung pay for damage caused by a faulty Galaxy Note 7, the company refused to do it.
As The Guardian story reads: “Barwick claims he called the company 45 minutes after the fire started and Samsung said they’d call back within 24 hours. When they failed to do so, Barwick called them again and emailed pictures of the damaged phones. “They said they’d call us back. They never did.”
At the end, Samsung’s insurance company, Samsung Fire and Marine, contacted John and told him that they can’t pay the full price for damaged goods. Instead, they offered to pay a depreciated values of the goods damaged. As John said-
“They told me they weren’t going to pay replacement costs of any damaged items. We were asking to have our carpet replaced and to have the goods that were sprayed on replaced. We sent them photos.”
If Samsung wants to leave this huge Note 7 mess without any lasting scars, the company can’t refuse to pay for the damage their smartphone caused. They have to pay each and every customer a full price of any item damaged by the phone catching fire since Samsung is the one to blame for all that. If Samsung continues to behave like a soulless corporate entity, users will just switch to a different manufacturer; at least we have a solid number of high-quality smartphone manufacturers these days, so Samsung can’t act like the users don’t have any alternative. Even Apple can’t behave like that these days.