Samsung versus Sandisk et Al

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Recently, I described the ultra slow response to replacement of my Sandisk Ultra II SSD, it took over 4 weeks. It seems the season for equipment failures, my Canon SL-1 took just over a week to be repaired, and last week my Samsung Tablet stopped charging, they sent a 2nd day shipping return label, so it took exactly a week to get back to me today with a nice description of the issue, and the new battery and main board they installed.

Then, today, I received a new but old stock Samsung Galaxy S5 Cell phone, sold by Amazon that I intend to have my wife use and switch from her old non smart cell phone. For $169, it seemed like a good starter phone. After a few hours of operation, it developed a rolling screen along with other issues. It took 5 minutes to request a replacement from Amazon and get a return label. I will have the replacement either tomorrow or day after. I'll lose the glass screen protector, but I bought a pack of 3, and was wondering what to do with the other two.

That Sandisk Service (Western Digital Service Center) is not competing with the world class companies. I've had very fast service from Lexar in the past and from Crucial as well. Its been many years since I've had a WD hard drive fail, but they used to be fairly fast at sending replacements.

 

[Luds34]

Good to know and thanks for sharing. I like to hear personal stories, experiences dealing with various companies. I've yet to deal with Sandisk on an RMA, and I guess based on your experiences I'm happy to be using Samsung SSDs.

Your experience has echoed my limited experience with both Samsung and Crucial. Crucial has lifetime warranty on their thumb drives. I had one fail after a few years of use. It was a 16 gb and at the time could have been replaced for 20 bucks. More as a test, I tried their RMA process, it was painless and I had a no thumb drive in just over a week.

Dropped an almost brand new Samsung Galaxy S3 shortly after it came out and struggled trying to find anyone local to repair it for cheap. I was told the screens were in short supply and were being marked up. Did it through Samsung, which turned out to be the cheapest option and total turn around time was maybe a week. Their attention to detail was solid as they replaced part of the metal bezel which had also been scuffed during the drop.

 

[Tugela]

Good to know and thanks for sharing. I like to hear personal stories, experiences dealing with various companies. I've yet to deal with Sandisk on an RMA, and I guess based on your experiences I'm happy to be using Samsung SSDs.

Your experience has echoed my limited experience with both Samsung and Crucial. Crucial has lifetime warranty on their thumb drives. I had one fail after a few years of use. It was a 16 gb and at the time could have been replaced for 20 bucks. More as a test, I tried their RMA process, it was painless and I had a no thumb drive in just over a week.

Dropped an almost brand new Samsung Galaxy S3 shortly after it came out and struggled trying to find anyone local to repair it for cheap. I was told the screens were in short supply and were being marked up. Did it through Samsung, which turned out to be the cheapest option and total turn around time was maybe a week. Their attention to detail was solid as they replaced part of the metal bezel which had also been scuffed during the drop.

They probably replaced the entire phone, lol. That is what they did with their camera lenses when they developed some defect under warranty. You used to be able to buy "spare parts" for them, which consisted of the entire lens minus the extra bits (such as hood and pouch) you would normally get in retail.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

The 2nd phone from Amazon was clearly a used phone, and had a cracked screen, so it went back and I ordered a 3rd. Its fine and has been in use for over a month. Thats the first time I've received a used item from Amazon, I've bought thousands of items. They took it back, of course and refunded me.

About the same time, my Samsung 10 in tablet started discharging while in use. I had two of them and both were fine for the first 5 months. Samsung took the tablet back, replaced the battery and main board, and returned it all in a week. They gave me a 2 day return label and repaired it in 1 day, then sent it back by 2 day. Its been fine now for a month.

I bought a 3rd one at Costco when they had their Black Friday sales.

I use the tablets as monitors for my security cameras, they run a app called tinycam monitor which is great. I occasionally use one for other apps like trouble shooting my wi-fi signal strength, but all three run as a monitor 24/7. I also have a Amazon 8 in Kindle that runs the same software and two Amazon fire TV boxes that run it, so I can monitor the cams via my TV if I want.

It will be interesting to see just how long those tablets last. They were not designed for 24/7 use, but they are inexpensive and work well.