Samsung = Bad, Lowes = Good

Folks who are Facebook friends with me may remember that our 3.5 year or dryer failed about 2 weeks ago.  Short version:  The rotating drum split along a weld line, which then split along the front edge of the drum.  Something like this (actually, exactly like this):

Well, we've been messing around since then, working towards a resolution.  Sadly, Samsung threw up the stone wall of "we can't help you"....  "It's out of warranty"...  "did you buy the extended warranty?".  After the maze of trying to contact them, infinite do-loops in the system, etc.  they offered to send out a repair person, but quoted a repair cost that I considered excessive, especially for a failure that I don't consider normal.

So we went to Lowes (where we bought the failed one) to look at a replacement.  The freindly folks there pretty much refused to sell us a new dryer.  They declared (as I had done) that a dryer drum simply should not fail at 3.5 years, and that we should push Samsung harder, to try and get some form of consideration.

That turned out to be fruitless.  They finally sent us a form email declaring that out TV was out of warranty.  TV???  Really???  Nothing says "We don't value our customers" like a sloppy mistake in a form letter response.

So we went back to Lowes again, and when we explained they said "that's ridiculous".  They even offered to call and appear to Samsung as their distributor. 

That turned out to be fruitless.


Back to the replace plan.  'Cause I'm not spending big bucks to replace something that shouldn't have broken in the first place.

As it turned out, Lowes made us a really great deal, we're getting a new machine for essentially what Samsung was going to charge for a repair.  And the Lowes manager says he's going to store the old machine until he can show it to the Samsung rep. in person.

One company showed dedicated customer service, and earned our future business.  The other?  Well, I'm not exaclty a fan of Samsung right now.  Now I know that they were well within their rights, but it would've been nice if they could've at least pretended to care.

/RANT