Technology

Even more dramatic is that if a repair service provider discovers a third-party spare part that was installed in a Galaxy device as part of a previous repair, they must immediately disassemble the smartphone, tablet or notebook into its individual parts and inform Samsung of the details of the respective incident.

Well this feels illegal (or certainly should be). Imagine taking your car in for a repair only to find out the shop functionally scrapped it and told on you to Ford, all because they noticed you had changed a tire.

God bless iFixit, and God damn Samsung.

The use of aftermarket parts in repair is relatively common. This provision requires independent repair shops to destroy the devices of their own customers, and then to snitch on them to Samsung. 

That's just pure evil and bully. If you have aftermarket parts they will destroy the device and force you to pay for it. This is the reason we need right to repair. Every consumer should support it.

It's honestly impressive to find out that someone is WORSE than Apple when it comes to repairing and customer rights.

"...prohibits repair stores from repairing components on the mainboard. Instead, the entire component must be replaced..."

A flagrant disregard for the costs of e-waste on the environment. What a surprise.

I think the part that bothers me the most is that, the customer is likely completely oblivious to the fact that a repair person used a third party part in their device.

I don't think most cellphone users are discerning enough to start checking if the repair place is actually licensed by Samsung to perform repairs or not. They just see the Samsung logo under the banner of "we fix these brands" and go in. As long as it's fully working when they walk out, they couldn't possibly give fewer shits whether genuine Samsung parts were used to fix the device.

This is essentially victim blaming. Anyone who can fix the phone themselves with non-Samsung parts is going to do it themselves and never get "caught" doing it. So instead of "catching" the "bad actors" putting non Samsung parts into phones, they're putting that responsibility on customers? That's a PR nightmare. What the fuck are they thinking?

Apple: bricks phone with unapproved part. Samsung: “hold my beer”

Interesting timing, these practices are about to be super illegal under Oregon’s SB1596 right to repair bill that just passed

There are some things I don't really understand after reading this article:

1. Why exactly does Samsung want the customer data? Are they wanting to ban their Samsung account or something?

2. How exactly does Samsung police this? Surely the repair shop could just... not tattle?

3. What the hell does the repair shop tell the customer when they return their phone in literal fucking pieces?

Fuck Samsung

Wow, I didn't know Samsung could really get much less appealing but they absolutely managed to up the ante by a lot. Samsung and Apple will never get another dime from me

Who actually makes a decent phone anymore?

It is the many stories like this... That have kept and will continue to keep me from ever buying a Samsung product

Almost makes me want to dig my old lg out of mothballs