“F” is for the lack of a “Warm and Fuzzy” feeling I should get when buying a Samsung product and getting one free. So far, I feel tricked and morose. I am beginning to wonder if this was a scam on Samsung’s part to bump their revenue short term.
I recently got a couple S8+ from the Samsung site directly with their buy one get one (BOGO) offer and so far I have been non-plussed.
I opted for free financing because, hey, it’s free. They Use TD Bank for their accounts. And I must say, a visit back to the 90’s web site is not a refreshing stroll down memory lane.
It is a slow, unresponsive site. The UX is pretty dang bad. No user feed back on any clicks or submits. Every time I login, click on anything, submit anything, I wonder if the site is doing anything and wait, wait, wait. Not a great experience.
Additionally, they have asinine name and password requirements. Not least of which is a maximum length of 12 for the password. Seriously? My base password length is 13. So this completely screws with my secure password patterns. I feel like I just fell into the Land of the Lost Websites every time I have to use the site.
I have called Samsung as well to make sure the credit for the BOGO is going through, but so far it has not shown up on the finance site. The CSR at Samsung says it will take several weeks but the BOGO copy says it will take a few days. This is not comforting.
By the way, the regular Samsung number at 1 800-726-7864 cannot handle e-commerce issues. You have to call 1 855-726-8721 for e-commerce promotion issues or questions.
Lastly, because I never trust auto-payments when they are first setup, I made an extra initial $80 payment after setting up my ACH on the TD site. The site shows it went through, but today, I received TWO letters saying my payment had failed and extra fees have already been added with additional threats, etc., etc.
So I call, and of course they are closed. East coast banker hours. I logged in while trying to call, and the account still shows the payment went through. So I am confused and upset. I don’t normally make mistakes setting up ACH payments. Being harassed by collection letters immediately after making payments is very discomfiting. Additionally, the account still does not show the BOGO offer.
I am starting to smell trouble. And trouble does not necessarily mean Samsung or TD are trying to get me, be mean, or make me have a bad experience. That would be STUPID, right? But I AM having a bad experience and I AM now spending way more time on this than I should have needed to and suspect I will need to spend MORE time on this to get it straightened out. Time is money. This is now costing me money with no definitive prospect that I even got the deal for which I signed up.
In summary, although I do love my new Samsung Galaxy S8 products, I do not love the experience of buying them and then trying to pay for them, and verifying that I actually got my BOGO offer. BOGO offer or not.
We will see what is up with TD and Samsung.
I will likely not ever buy via Samsung again when T-Mobile basically runs the same deals at the same time anyway. Shame on me.
