The incredible one month saga to fix my $ 2000 Galaxy Z Fold2

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This story was originally published and last updated .

I have strong feelings about foldable items – I think they are the future, but I also think you should definitely not buy one right now. As cool as foldable phones like the Galaxy Z Fold2 may be, the technology is still very new. These phones are expensive and more prone to hardware problems than traditional flat phones. Being a giant nerd with questionable decision-making skills, despite all this, I bought a Galaxy Z Fold2 for $ 2,000 shortly after release. It was amazing! Until it had to be fixed. It’s been a month now and I still haven’t got the phone back, thanks to the combined incompetence of UPS and Samsung.

The Galaxy Z Fold2 has a large 7.6-inch foldable display, the top layer of which is a special flexible screen protector. Samsung advises you not to remove it so I never did. However, the bezel began to peel off around the fold after about a month of use, allowing air bubbles to infiltrate the screen. And yes, that’s an annoying problem for a $ 2,000 phone, but I got into this with both eyes open – I know this is new and imperfect technology. However, I was not worried because the phone comes with “Galaxy Z Premier Support”.

I thought I would just call Galaxy Z Premier (you get a card with the number in the box), send the phone away and someone who knew what they were doing replace the screen protector. Easy right? I called, got the UPS label, and sent my phone away. A few days later, he returned to my door with a new screen protector. Instead of a satisfactory resolution, I had a phone with even more air bubbles under the screen protector. In addition, there were scratches in the (very soft) material where someone had tried to push out one of the bubbles with a tool. So fix round two.

When I tried to resend the phone, UPS lost it after the Samsung scheduled pickup. I still don’t know what happened specifically, but the device was never scanned into the system after I handed it over to the UPS driver at my front door. While my confidence was shaken, I assumed Galaxy Z Premier Support could handle this. Sure, phones get lost sometimes, and there were systems to handle this. I reported the missing package to UPS and Samsung and then waited. And waited. I was told this investigation could take eight working days, and there was the Thanksgiving holiday.

I give a phone to the UPS driver. UPS initially claimed this never happened.

In the end, UPS canceled the investigation, claiming that I never gave them the package. Fortunately, I have a doorbell camera so I was able to convince UPS to complete the search. In the end they failed to find the phone. Okay, so Galaxy Z Premier Support takes care of me, right? It has “Prime Minister” right in the name! Samsung told me to hold on tight and someone would get in touch to fix things. I was told this or something like that several times over the next two weeks; sometimes it had to be an email and sometimes a phone call, but it never happened.

At the beginning of this week I was a bit fed up and decided to call another round. UPS said it could not reimburse me for the lost package because Samsung provided the label so I had to talk to Samsung. However, Samsung said the shipper had lost the box so I had to get my money from UPS. While both companies pointed the finger at the other, I decided I had exhausted my options as a “normal” consumer.

You see, I am not a powerful person because of it almost any size, but i can influence the people who use PR for smartphone makers. So this one way I have a little bit of power. I suspected I would pitch an attack in public or ask the PR to intervene, this would be resolved quickly, but the Fold was a personal phone and I didn’t want to ask for any special treatment. However, since there were no other options left, I tweeted.

Since then I have been in contact with Samsung PR and received a ton of phone calls from Samsung support, which made me think I will fix this sooner than later. That’s good news, but I shouldn’t publicly shame the company for getting this fixed. That’s not even an option for most Samsung customers who don’t have a few thousand Twitter followers or contacts at Samsung’s PR firm. Someone else in this situation would likely be out of two thousand.

UPS clearly accelerated this situation by losing the box, but Samsung is the one who sold me a $ 2000 phone with “Premier” support. Currently, Samsung claims that a replacement phone will be shipped in the next few days. I will update this post when and when this situation is resolved. However, I would warn anyone who plans to drop $ 2,000 on one of Samsung’s lovely foldable items: there’s nothing premium about the premium support.


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