Need your advice regarding Samsung/Service Engineers

vishaljh

Guys,

I need help with a recent incident with Samsung and their cowboy engineers.
I have a Samsung Americal Fridge Freezer which is just under 6 years old. The fridge comes with 2 year parts and labour and 10 year compressor warranty.
Recently the fridge stopped working so I contacted Samsung who asked me to call Group FX service centre. The service centre charges £100 callout fee whether they can repair or not. If there is compressor issue, there is additional £100 that I have to pay for repair. There will be no part cost for compressor as this is under warranty. I agreed to above.

When the engineer came out, he check the sockets etc and quicly opened and closed the back panel and told us that this looks like an internal leak which may have cause compressor to fail and beyond economical repair. He said that he will send the report to Samsung HO and will mention compressor issues/internal leak as well and they should generally offer some form of compensation.

The engineer did not send the report for 2 days and even after that I was calling their customer relations daily for an update. This team for waiting for the HO to come back to them. I was finally given HO's number as asked to chase them. I called them several times, waiting almost 30 minutes each time without any luck. Requested their customer relations to call their HO for update and they said they don't have time to hold the phone to HO which really !!!!ed me off.
I finally got hold of HO and was told Samsung cannot do anything as this is internal leak. Really angry as wasted so much time and energy chasing them based on what engineer had told me and now they will not do anything.

I then spoke to a local enginner friend who said that his is 100% a compressor issue and they don't want to waste their time as changing a compressor is a big job and not worth their money as they have already taken £100 initially and they can only charge £100 which is not worth their time.

Really !!!!ed at this stage. Contacted samsung UK president's office and after 20-25 emails where I challenged that I have proof that there is no leak and my engineer can provide a report, they agreed to change the compressor with no cost other that what I have already paid. Even arranging for an engineer to come

Same engineer came out with another senior enginner. While changing the compressor he said that he was sorry for flagging this as leak but they are told by Samsung not to change compressors.

The compressor was changed and the fridge has been working fine for several days now. If it was not for me continuously emailing and challenging them, samsung and the Group FX engineers would have got away with stealing the callout charge and lying. I am sure they must be doing this all the time.

This has really made me angry as I have had anxiety and so much trouble last 2-3 weeks without a freidge/freezer in this weather with 3 kids. I would like to ensure that samsung and group FX pay for this and think twice in future before messsing and lying to their customers.

Any suggestions on how I can pursue this further?

JJ_Egan

See a solicitor for advice and take them to court .
But the original engineer is just going to say he was mistaken regarding the leak .
Samsung are just going to refer you to the warranty's terms and conditions .


Fridge works and you have anxiety so just forget it as part of life .

Les79

Sounds like they made a hash of it. But I presume that you want some compensation, in which case I must ask what your actual losses are as a result of the mis-diagnosis of the fault.

I can only really see it being the cost of the independent engineer checking over the unit. Perishable goods maybe, but then again the food probably 'perished' (or was stored elsewhere) within the period between the compressor failing and the first service engineer visit (so it will probably be linked to a warranty term). Also maybe loss of use but not 100% sure if that is a legal thing (loss of enjoyment exists, so may be similar).

What else? Costs of contacting are negligible if done by email, you probably didn't take time off work due to it either?

So yes, you are probably entitled to some form of compensation. Certainly speak to a solicitor or maybe even CAB about it.

If I were you, I'd get the head office address for the warranty company and make a list of your actual losses and the engineer reports (theirs and independent one), then send them a "letter before action" outlining a proposed settlement figure. Give them a reasonable time to reply.

Your last paragraph suggests that you are more "out for blood" though... Sadly, the world doesn't always work like that and it sometimes takes A LOT of effort to expose dodgy practices. Oftentimes, simpletons like me and you can *see* this sort of thing a mile off but the regulatory bodies prefer the reactionary approach; deal with it when it becomes a huge issue. To that end, don't hold out hope that you can penalise them BUT have a look to see whether they are regulated and put in a complaint to the regulatory body!

unholyangel

Unless i've misread your post, I can't see anything to pursue. While you can issue court proceedings against anyone for any or no reason, unless you have a claim based on law where you've suffered quantifiable losses then its doomed to fail (at your cost).

The most you could really do in this instance is make a complaint to trading standards, which usually needs to be done via citizens advice.

unholyangel

Les79 wrote: »

Sounds like they made a hash of it. But I presume that you want some compensation, in which case I must ask what your actual losses are as a result of the mis-diagnosis of the fault.

I can only really see it being the cost of the independent engineer checking over the unit. Perishable goods maybe, but then again the food probably 'perished' (or was stored elsewhere) within the period between the compressor failing and the first service engineer visit (so it will probably be linked to a warranty term). Also maybe loss of use but not 100% sure if that is a legal thing (loss of enjoyment exists, so may be similar).

What else? Costs of contacting are negligible if done by email, you probably didn't take time off work due to it either?

So yes, you are probably entitled to some form of compensation. Certainly speak to a solicitor or maybe even CAB about it.

If I were you, I'd get the head office address for the warranty company and make a list of your actual losses and the engineer reports (theirs and independent one), then send them a "letter before action" outlining a proposed settlement figure. Give them a reasonable time to reply.

Your last paragraph suggests that you are more "out for blood" though... Sadly, the world doesn't always work like that and it sometimes takes A LOT of effort to expose dodgy practices. Oftentimes, simpletons like me and you can *see* this sort of thing a mile off but the regulatory bodies prefer the reactionary approach; deal with it when it becomes a huge issue. To that end, don't hold out hope that you can penalise them BUT have a look to see whether they are regulated and put in a complaint to the regulatory body!

I can't see spoiled food/loss of use being caused by the breach anyway so I would doubt those could be recovered.

The breach is misdiagnosing the fault - by which time the food had already been spoiled.

vishaljh

Thank you all for sensible replies. I think you all are right and I should get on with my life instead of wasting more time. As you have all flagged, it would be hard to quantify my loss in monetory terms.

Thanks once again. Extremely useful advice.

Les79

unholyangel wrote: »

I can't see spoiled food/loss of use being caused by the breach anyway so I would doubt those could be recovered.

The breach is misdiagnosing the fault - by which time the food had already been spoiled.

Aye, I covered that in my post

Les79

vishaljh wrote: »

Thank you all for sensible replies. I think you all are right and I should get on with my life instead of wasting more time. As you have all flagged, it would be hard to quantify my loss in monetory terms.

Thanks once again. Extremely useful advice.

Well, I still think you should have a pot-shot and send them a Letter Before Action here! What is the cost of a letter and a stamp? If you make it seem like you are willing to go all the way to small claims court then they may very well offer you a goodwill gesture, if your complaint is "fair" (only really include quantifiable losses; the engineer report from third party is a strong example).

vishaljh

Les79 wrote: »

Well, I still think you should have a pot-shot and send them a Letter Before Action here! What is the cost of a letter and a stamp? If you make it seem like you are willing to go all the way to small claims court then they may very well offer you a goodwill gesture, if your complaint is "fair" (only really include quantifiable losses; the engineer report from third party is a strong example).

I am still thinking about this. I was planning to write to Samsung before and already drafting something. But based on advice here, I think I have a better claim against the service company than samsung who will just say that they were going off the engineer report. I don't have any way to prove that their own engineer said that Samsung have asked them not to change compressors.

So at this point, I can claim the original call-out charge plus using my own engineer cost as a starting point. This is for the service company.I will keep the group posted. Thanks once again.

lincroft1710

Les79 wrote: »

Well, I still think you should have a pot-shot and send them a Letter Before Action here! What is the cost of a letter and a stamp? If you make it seem like you are willing to go all the way to small claims court then they may very well offer you a goodwill gesture, if your complaint is "fair" (only really include quantifiable losses; the engineer report from third party is a strong example).

I can't see OP has any "quantifiable losses". In any case, given Samsung's attitude, a LBA would hardly worry them

lincroft1710

vishaljh wrote: »

So at this point, I can claim the original call-out charge plus using my own engineer cost as a starting point. This is for the service company.I will keep the group posted. Thanks once again.

What have you exactly paid for so far?