Samsung not resolving my issue, what are my options?

ATombGamer

Hi,

This is a bit of a long one but I want to give the whole story to get the best advice.

I bought a new 75" Samsung TV on 20th August directly from Samsung and it arrived on 22nd August. I paid for the order using my credit card via PayPal. Everything worked perfectly until it suddenly stopped recognising my soundbar by both HDMI e-arc and WiFi. 

I contacted the technical support team on 13th September and spent an hour going through various troubleshooting steps and it was concluded that there was a problem with the TV not properly talking to the soundbar. We were able to get them to connect again via HDMI e-arc but I couldn't use some of the sound features such as Dolby Atmos and it also wouldn't detect the soundbar via WiFi. They escalated the issue to a higher up technical support team.

Nearly a week later they concluded that the TV was indeed faulty and that I could either get a repair or a replacement. At this point, having had an acceptable customer support process so far, I said that a repair would be fine. It then took them multiple more days to get back in touch to organise a repair to be told that it can only be Mon-Fri and that the repair would be with the local authorised repair shop. I am a teacher and therefore Mon-Fri is not possible as I work during the day and I live alone with no local family to be in the house for the TV to be collected. I also looked up the repair shop and they have terrible reviews with an average rating of less than 1.5/5. I phoned Samsung up and explained the situation and that I would like a replacement instead. They transferred me to that team and cancelled the repair in the meantime.

It was at this point that I was told that because I hadn't contacted the sales support department within 30 days of delivery (by this point I was on the 30th day and all my dealings so far had been with the technical support department) that they couldn't do a replacement without doing a repair first. I was trying to sort this out on my lunch break but I kept getting put on hold for up to 10 minutes at a time and I had a class to teach. I explained that I would have to go but that I would be contacting again to get it resolved. I tried phoning 3 times that evening and twice more later in the week to be told each time that there were no advisors available and that they would arrange a call back. Each time I gave my details but never received a call back.

On Saturday 29th September I contacted them again via live chat who repeated what I had already heard but recognised that I had been trying to resolve the issue well within the 30 days and agreed to escalate it to get approval for a replacement. I got an email on Wednesday 1st October saying "We apologize for the inconvenience caused. As your TV is now beyond the 30-day period for faulty items, a repair is required to address the issue."

I am now talking with another advisor via live chat as I am typing this post out but I want to know what my options are if I can't get this issue resolved. I feel like I have been really patient with them; I have tried all of the troubleshooting suggestions that they have given; I am trying to sort all of this out around my teaching job and its not my fault that whenever I phoned, I couldn't get through and nobody called me back like they said I would.

Thanks in advance for your support.

ATombGamer

Update: after an hour of essentially being put on hold on live chat, they have agreed that I am allowed a replacement and we are now trying to book one in.