SmartThings has No Support in Australia

General Discussion
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I run in to an issue with my hub/account and contacted SmartThings support on Samsungs website. The USA team replied fairly quickly but informed me i need to contact SmartThings Australia support as they cant help because i’m not in the USA.

Problem is there is no SmartThings support in Australia. So just a warning for anyone in Australia thinking of buying SmartThings that if there’s an issue with your account or hub you are clean out of luck.

Something to keep in mind when selecting your smart home hub.

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@tech2urdoor, can you give some advice?

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I may not be up to date on this, but my understanding when they first launched the Australian model was that it was going to be released through RACV and they would be providing the support. But only for that specific model.

Where did you buy your hub and what model is it?

I also see that there is A support page for the WiFi hub on the Samsung site in Australia. Is that the support channel that you tried?

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Yes RACV was the original seller when it was first introduced, then a number of other major nation wide retailers started selling them. I purchased from JB-HiFi who also stock the range of SmartThings sensors Smart Home - Best Home Automation Devices At JB Hi-Fi

If you click on the link on that page to contact support it takes you to Email Technical Support | Samsung Australia

There’s nowhere to select SmartThings. The USA SmartThings said to submit the support query through the app and it would go to the relevant place for my location however they dont reply. I see a number of other posts regarding no support in Australia and RACV either not replying or not having the ability to do much for example https://community.smartthings.com/t/my-experience-with-racv-smartthings-in-australia-and-support-so-far

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Smartthings did transfer all of its firstline support. To the general Samsung support Centers last year, that’s no different than in the US or the UK. Once you tell them it’s about SmartThings they will first check their database and then if they can’t solve the problem they should send it over to a different team.

Again, that’s just what they said is supposed to happen, I can’t say how it works out in practice. Just that it’s not surprising that the first level questions are fielded by Samsung.

There have been a number of complaints about how this works out in the US as well. I previously told the story of my friend who was having a problem and first line support asked where they had purchased the virtual switch.:scream:

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I can’t say I’ve ever needed their support but I imagine you could contact Samsung. Surely they would have to support us. Can you elaborate on what support you needed? We are a very helpful bunch here. I imagine if there was a problem with the hardware JB-Hifi would happily refund or replace the hub…

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The USA side of SmartThings seems to be ok, but i’m only a fairly new user so i will be the first to admit i dont know a whole lot about SmartThings. As a consumer i’ve bought over $50k worth of stuff from Samsung over the years but never required their support. But thats funny they asked where the virtual switch was bought from lol.

Unfortunately it seems like they sell the product in Australia but dont support it. This is from Samsung US:

Hi

We are really sorry for the experience you had and I can understand how annoying it is to write for different departments in countries.

But there is really nothing we can do from our end as you are based on Australia and trying to connect things outside of United States Of America. There are no enough resources and information to offer you the need support.

Please refer to the contact details below, they might redirect you to the appropriate department.

1-800-SAMSUNG
(1-800-726-7864)

9am - 9pm Eastern Time,
Monday - Saturday (US)

11am - 8pm Eastern Time,
Monday - Saturday (Canada)

We regret the inconvenience caused.

Regards,
Samsung SmartThings Support.

But nobody at Samsung seem to know anything about SmartThings. So i just wanted to let people in Australia know before going down a rabbit hole and investing heavily in SmartThings that automating a whole house may not be a wise move with no support.

Regarding why i contacted them. My wife had a Samsung phone and account for years, so when we got the hub i naturally registered it to her existing account.

After learning of presence detection and being able to perform automations if one or both of us are at home i created a Samsung account and wanted to move the hub to my account and just add her as a member because she knows nothing about ST or automation. I cant find any way to do this myself but apparently ST support is able to do it.

Second is trying to get video to display from my Ring floodlight camera as it’s listed as supported on Samsungs website. It pairs, i can turn the light on/off and it registers motion but wont show video. Even on my brand new Samsung Q90R TV with SmartThings built in it wont display video.

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Ah bugger. I’m sorry to hear that mate. Thanks for the warning then. I bought my hub from JB-Hifi as soon as I saw it there. I’m in SA and didn’t want to order interstate from that RACV joint. It’s so strange how they launched her in Australia with them. I also found it strange that JB-Hifi sold nearly all the ‘australian’ SmartThings accessories except for their zigbee smart plugs which funnily enough you could order online from Samsung. Their whole launch in Australia has been so half assed and this lack of support would explain that. That e-mail is so poorly written, it’s almost like English was not their first language.

It seems like something Samsung should be able to help you with quite easily…if they were to actually give you support.

I can’t help you unfortunately but what I can tell you is the problems you are having are most likely linked. I setup the hub to my account and added my other half as a user. When I bought one of their vision camera’s and added it to the system she can also see the sensor there, can interact with it and even gets the notifications from it she just can’t access the video. My guess is they have gone a bit overboard with security or just neglected some code and only the owner of the system can see the recordings.

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Yes it’s one of the strangest product launches i’ve ever seen. For anyone outside Australia RACV is an automotive emergency roadside assistance/insurance company for car breakdowns for one state in the country, so why in the world they were chosen as the SmartThings distributor is crazy.

Even then the “launch” was more of a “lets stick this product in a dark corner of our website and see if anyone stumbles across it”. All pretty half arsed, so it’s kind of no surprise there’s no support.

Such a shame really, SmartThings has so much going for it and a great community doing the work. 2020 is going to be all about home automation and it’s a race by the big players to gain market share. Samsung should be going all in on this, and not floundering around with no support for an entire country.

Anyway, still no reply from Australian support. I think your right @tech2urdoor and the problems may be related, my only option is to probably delete the hub and all accounts and start from scratch. But i have ActionTiles, Echo Speaks, tons of devices, device handlers, automations etc and i really dont have the motivation to go through all that again so i’ve just pushed the whole SmartThings stuff to the side.

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2 weeks and no reply.

Samsung just a FYI, it might be just a $100 smart hub and maybe $350 in SmartThings branded sensors I’ve bought so not a big deal to you guys.

However 3 weeks ago i bought a Samsung 65" Q90R TV for the bedroom before i had these hub problems as i wanted to keep everything Samsung and the TV had ST built in.

I’m also purchasing a 75" for the lounge in the next week but will now go LG OLED instead of the 75" Q90 i was planning. And on Monday i dropped $3k on a fridge, i was going to go a Samsung smart fridge but went LG instead.

And i was looking at upgrading the phone this month from an S10+ to a new A20 this month, but again will explore other makers.

So not bothering to reply to customers over a hub has now lost $10,000 in purchases in a month. I’ve always bought Samsung appliances, phones, tablets etc since day one and this is the first time I’ve ever asked for help and I’ve basically been told “Sucks to be you”.

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Yes, I have a similar issue. There is no support for Smartthings in Australia.

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And JbHiFi have just about sold out of All SmartThings devices. And cannot find any anywhere else. Little point going to Ikea, as I am now replacing batteries about monthly in several, lightly used, switches, etc. And I have yet to get Smartlife devices working! P’d Off, here.

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I have recieved calls from Samsung tech in Australia (after continuously chasing them up). They seem to need to talk to upper managment and have not helped me at all(no idea of my problem). I have called or contacted them for 5 months. Lodge a complaint to accc. I did .We have consumer rights in Australia use them .

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I’ve purchased all these items too and spent hundreds of dollars. Keep me in the loop.

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Smarthome (Au) webstore has been advertising, what looks like, the replacement Smartthings devices, due late Feb/early March (a week or two ago that was late January, so dont hold breathe to hard).

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Aeotec has put out an official announcement about Australia:

Australia: Aeotec to release ST clones, including hub, in 2021

This should be good news, both with regard to availability and support in Australia.

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SmartHome.com.au in Australia is now listing most of the Smartthings (rebranded Aeotec) devices and hub as available to purchase. The exception are the Button and the Smart Plug which are still listed as pre order