How Customers Responded To Samsung’s Apology Over Samsung Note 7

How Customers Responded To Samsung’s Apology Over Samsung Note 7

Posted by Amy Clark on Posted in Customer Service News

Samsung has had an explosive year, when it comes to Samsung Note7, at least, and not the good kind. But how will it end?

 

The mobile giant is still reeling from a tremendous backlash over their handling of the once promising Samsung Galaxy Note 7. And customers took social media to give the mobile giant a piece of their mind.

 

So…What Happened with Samsung Note 7 Anyway?

 

The Galaxy Note 7 was released on August 19th, just a few months ago. Techradar noted, “The Galaxy Note 7 took Samsung’s best phone to date, the S7 Edge, stretched it to a 5.7-inch curved display, and added an S Pen stylus.

 

It has the same top-of-the-line camera and specs.” Techradar also awarded the Note 7 4.5 out of 5 stars and they weren’t alone. Seems like this was going to help compete with the upcoming Google Pixel and Apple’s iPhone 7 weeks before their release.

 

But the celebrations began a bit too early. According to TIME, in the US there were 92 reports of the batteries overheating, 26 reports of burns, and 55 reports of damage. Even some of the largest airlines and cruise ships in the world started taking precautions, asking passengers to alert the crew if they are Galaxy Note 7 owners.

 

In early September, Samsung ceased sales of the Galaxy Note 7 and issued a voluntary recall of devices sold before the 15th. Samsung recalled around 2.5 million devices globally and issued hundreds of thousands of replacements once the issues were resolved.

 

Except for the fact that the issue was  actually never taken care of. It didn’t take long for the replacements to start combusting too.

 

On October 9th, Samsung stopped replacing phones due to the reports of the problem continuing to exist within replacements, but in a statement still refused to admit the seriousness and safety concerns with these phones.

 

As you can imagine, this has already negatively impacted Samsung in shares, image, and chances to keep up with rivals like Apple and Google.

 

Eventually, Samsung was forced to acknowledge the failure and safety concerns of their product, taking a huge blow to their PR, and making this one of the most notable failures in the tech industry in recent years.

 

It was only this week when they finally started to take hold of the situation, when they ran full-page apology ads in three major US daily newspapers on November 7th – The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

 

This was a very needed apology, but did it come too late?

 

In our day and age, the need for companies to put customers first, and the fact that social media can “make or break” even a huge corporate image put intense pressure on Samsung. How did Samsung customers react to their heartfelt apology? Did Samsung really show a sincere effort…enough to make customers forgive (and eventually forget?)

 

Here are some of the more notable comments we found on Twitter, tagging the company (Tweets with foul language, and there are many of those, have been taken out of this list).

 

From the looks of it, it seems as if people weren’t too excited about the apology, and some even refused to return their devices, while others announced to the Tweetosphere they’re moving their business to the competition.

 

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Amy Clark is the Lead Author & Editor of IWantItNow Blog. Amy established the Customer Engagement blog to create a source for news and discussion about some of the issues, challenges, news, and ideas relating to customer service, support and engagement.