What wouldn’t large smartphone manufacturers give to free willing premium customers from Apple’s hands and win them over in the end. Now it turns out: Samsung is not necessarily one of them. Apparently every cent is needed there. Chance lost, now I’m staying with Apple – the topic of today’s GIGA weekend column.
The situation in South Korea must be really serious, because Samsung is currently also happy to take out short-term loans from customers like us who are willing to buy. Excuse me, what am I playing on? I’ll summarize the events briefly: A good deal made the rounds in the Samsung online shop last week – A new Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G cost 239 euros – a top price for the mid-range smartphone. With a gap of less than 40 euros to the best price, but also not exactly unbelievably cheap (see the Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G at Amazon).
Why Samsung won’t sell me a Galaxy phone
Normally I mainly use my iPhone 13, but I also use an “Android toy” with a Xiaomi phone that is over three years old. After all, as a tech editor you should always think outside the box. The Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G would be a good and above all safe replacement, after all, the Xiaomi gherkin hasn’t received any updates for a long time. So just put it in the shopping cart and bought it in no time at all via PayPal Express. My money was already gone and on the Samsung account. Only the Galaxy A52s 5G never found its way to me.
The S variant is the improved version of the Galaxy A52 5G:
Confused by individual cancellation reports from various customers online, the question arose when did Samsung want to send me the good piece and whether this was still planned at all? The same thing happened to my GIGA colleague Kaan Gürayer, who also ordered the mobile phone almost at the same time. But when asked, he was assured that the device would soon be on its way to him. Shouldn’t that also apply to me?
As it turned out, it wasn’t to happen to him or to me. After a week, the cancellation message tumbled into the mailbox – without any comment. It only came a day later, now Samsung spoke of an unfortunate price error – they originally wanted to call 329 euros instead of 239 euros. Samsung, poor victim of dyscalculia!
My thoughts for the weekend: The column aims to provide food for thought and reflect on the week’s “news flood” towards the end. A small selection of previous articles in the column:
Mistakes happen, but…
My suspicions about the days were confirmed and didn’t leave me with a particularly positive impression of the Samsung shop. First of all: Mistakes happen, including price mistakes in web shops – who knows this better than I do. I worked for over 12 years as a product manager and project manager for one of the largest German online shops (see Cyberport.de shop). But it is the handling of mistakes that ultimately makes the difference. So what exactly pisses me off:
- It took Samsung a good week to cancel. Ironically, the customers who ordered first had to wait the longest for the cancellation – processing was obviously understaffed, manually and based on the last orders.
- A week in which Samsung was not only able to happily use my “short-term loan”, also a week in which I withheld an alternative replacement order from other retailers for understandable reasons.
- One “Declaration” did not take place at the same time, but only later. Normal, uninformed customers must have been more than confused and will in future tend to avoid the manufacturer’s own shop.
All in all, a missed opportunity for Samsung. If the comparatively small shortfall had simply been compensated for by a corresponding internal marketing booking, there would now be a great many satisfied and probably also new Samsung customers. But by going the hard way of the bean counter, you lose that same trust from these potential buyers. And then I had the chance to convince an old Apple fanboy of my own “One UI” system. Bad luck, now I’ll definitely stay with Apple!