Trying to reach Samsung customer service….

For quite some time I have been trying to get in touch with Samsung Deutschland in order to return our compact digital camera which seems to have some technical problems (I just decided not to do its job anymore). Samsung offers a special contact form which is separated into the different product segments and thus alllows to filter for the specific product. I gave it three times and have not received anything back so far, I even included images of the brand new looking camera to show that there is no exterior damage at all. But somehow there is no one on the other line….

From the start:

1) First Attempt
I went to Samsung’s website to check for the ideal way to get in contact for returning our at that time 0,75 yrs old camera. I even found the contact form and then had to find my way to the somewhat confusing manual when it comes to compact digital camera. Walking the path that seems intuitively right did not bring me to my model. Instead I had to try severyl menu combinations to finally get to my model. I then fillled in all the contact details into the form, explained the problem with the cam and then sent it off.

2) Over and Over
Having sent away the message I did not get a confirmation via email. So I simply had to assume the message reached its recipient and Samsung would soon answer to tell me the nearest service company I have to send the camera to. But no response. So I filled out the form again thinking that maybe theres was some important box not checked, etc. Again, all worked fine, all was filled out – no response. I did all that three times:

After several weeks of simply postponing the issue I checked the Samsung website again. Relauched! It looks pretty good: big visuals, a feeling of proximity, nice menus, features, new form promiosing „one day response“ Sounds really good.

Well, I also tried to use this new way to contact Samsung customer service and the result as of 27 March 2010 is „nada.“ No response aside from the automatically generated confirmation email.
What is going wrong? Is there a database issue, do they lack the necessary personnel to really respond within a day? I would also be happy with a 2 day response, just any response at all…

to be continued..

Update 09 April 2010: Samsung did answers. Unfortunately I received no email notification about Samsung’s reply. Also, when logging in at samsung.de I can check the status of my inquiry. Again unfortunately, Samung’s response is shown directly UNDER my message just like in an answered email. Thus even when you login and check the status of your customer inquiry you do not at once see that there is an answer at all. Only when you scroll down you all of a sudden realized that there IS a response. However, I must admit that they indeed answered within one day! Promise kept!
So please Samsung, try to give this form some update and make it more user-friendly. I am quite experienced in the web. But like so many other customers I am notoriously short of time and thus it took me 2 weeks to realize Samsung responded. Give it some more work and you will have a really good online service tool.