Apr 27, 2010 03:58 PM
5909 Views
In the iPhone era it was my small dream to have a touch phone. To my amusement Samsung came up with a comparatively cheap phone called Samsung STAR with wide publicity and good marketing. So I too joined the touch revolution by purchasing a Samsung STAR in September 2009 for a price of INR 9500. Initially all went well and phone was doing great. Then I noticed that most of my friends and relatives shout at me saying that I never pick up phone when ever they called. Later I understood that I was receiving only half the call that came to me. A similar problem is reported by another user in mouthshut.com.
Next I try to use the PC interface they provided with the phone. It never worked for me. After months of googling I found that it was wrong software they supplied with the handset. Almost all initial users had this problem. So I went to their website and downloaded the latest bug free version. Now it was working (not sure why Samsung uses not so standard formats for messages and videos). There was a cool feature that would scroll the photos when u tilt the phone while viewing a photo gallery. One fine day it stopped working. I did not bother as I had other means to view the photos. Time passed and one fine day the touchpad stopped working. You know if the touch doesn’t work for you wont be able to access anything in the phone. You wont be able to back up your contacts even. So in 5 months time a brand new Samsung STAR phone was just like a useless plastic box. Thank God they gave a 1 year warranty. So I took it to Samsung service center.
They looked at the phone and said they need the purchase bill along with the warranty card to avail warranty (Make sure you keep all the hell lot of bills you get daily. Since in this digital world companies like Samsung are still there , you might need them at some time). So had to search the entire house and I was lucky that I stored the bill. Now I took another off from my job and went again to the service center. The service center people look at you as if you have come with a stolen mobile and it’s our fault that its not working. They gave me a work order number and asked me to call them after two days.
Its almost two weeks and the service center doesn’t have a spare touchpad yet. I am using a 1100 Rs Nokia base model which is far better than 9.5k Samsung star touch. At least I am not missing any calls. Since its almost two weeks I visited Samsung site to check the status of the complaint online. I am trying this for the past 4 days and I cant register at Samsung site .It says "The transporter cannot connect with the server" also the service request page shows "hexadecimal value 0x17, is an invalid character. Line 6, position 223." and doesn’t load (Screen shot attached). Next tried to chat with online support. Though they say the support is available from 11-6. It says unavailable at 12:30 too(screen shot attached).
I am not sure if its my case alone but I would recommend people to use products of companies who are more responsible and customer centric. I remember NOKIA replacing around millions of batteries world wide including my wife’s mobile phone (it was a Rs 4000 phone) after finding that few of the batteries they supplied was faulty. If you purchase products of companies like Samsung you have to depend only on your luck!!!
So Good Luck.
