Smartthings Samsung account set to the wrong country. No way out but a complete wipe and reload

General Discussion
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As naggy as this is, I wanted to air out a huge pita issue that has a programmatically simple fix but as a user I have no way to fix it.

Somehow when migrating from ST classic to ST on samsung account the samsung account got set to the country code “Germany”. I have a shield TV as a hub so now NOTHING can be added via the new mobile app.

Long story short, programmatically there is a single field in a database at samsung that is the source of all of my woes but no one, (apparently) can change that field.

I’ve been told that instead of changing my country to USA, I must remove every single switch, dimmer, light bulb, remote, button, and so on in my entire house. Something like 100+ devices or so. Wipe the hub and factory reset, create a new account with the correct country code, re-add every single device, recreate all of the custom code to get my in-wall buttons working again, re-add all of the smart apps, and reconfigure every app, scene and smartapp to work the way I’d like them to work. This, of course, because there is no backup option. Nor is there an option to move my smartthings service from one samsung account to another.

So Samsung shuns about 30 minutes of tech-time needed to change a teensy country code on my account, while instead, I have to go through a week of asshattery to redo everything I’ve ever done on my network… Plus I’m signed up for this week of asshattery next time some wierd issue crops up.

mmn. Nah.

If I get to the step of resetting my hub, it’ll be to re-add every device to a different hub and ditch samsung all together. As soon as I post this, in fact, I’ll search again for another competitor that fits my needs.

In business these are the kinds of issues that create a waterfall event. It happens when a company leans on an innovative product without going back to address the minor pitfalls over time. Instead, because of the command of their market segement bean counters and accountants enjoy a period where they can cut corners and see graphably positive results. The numbers look good for all the skrimping and saving but they’ve managed to create a very fickle client base in the process.

Everyone who buys their stuff is only buying thier stuff for a set of benefits that are rapidly being redeveloped by compeditors. In fact, the frustration this causes tends to INSPIRE people to start thier own business to compete. Eventually a competitor catches up and a sell off becomes inevitable.

It’s been years since this issue has cropped up. I’ve stopped expecting a decent reply. All I know is I absolutely depore everything “Samsung” because they always seem to come locked up with these kinds of issues. Extra software on the phones and tablets. Short product lifetimes. Product abandonment. Etc.

In fact, now that I think about it, if I ever were to buy another samsung device I’d have to create a completely different account for it because this account is permanently locked in Deutschland.

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Very unfortunate! This is at least the second report of this issue recently, although in that case it was a new customer. :disappointed_relieved:

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They have some method to do this, but it involves wiping the whole account.

21st century and you still have to stick to a single country. I have lived permanently in 3 different countries and have visited for extended periods many others due to work reasons. I couldn’t cope if I should have changed the country assigned every time.

Google allows you to change your country assigned to your account once every year and allows you to have multiple accounts assigned to your phone with different countries.
Samsung meanwhile allows only a single Samsung account on your phone.

On the other hand, the services provided are limited to the country due to legal reasons, so the limitation is understandable till a point, but your rant is valid.
But meanwhile if you buy a phone in the UAE and use it in your home country, with an account assigned to your home country, the phone still will be bloated with apps for the UAE and not apps available in your account’s country. Nobody can understand the logic behind this…

I am completely agree with your comments on the product lifetime and abandonment as well. Samsung does that all the time, selling products with features printed on the box and half year later the feature has been already removed. (I have an older TV for what I have bought a camera for Skype calls, that is just a scandal how features have been removes.)

If you are considering other solutions, look at Hubitat, but as someone highlighted recently, their exit plan is unknown.

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Do you have a support ticket reference number?

The Samsung Account support team should be able to assist with this. In my experience the account is wiped though.

If you haven’t already, I’d recommend contacting the Samsung Account team here and select “Samsung account” as the service:
https://help.content.samsung.com/csweb/ticket/createQuestionTicket.do

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I have the same problem but I don’t remember if it started after I migrated from using a SmartThings account to a Samsung account. Somewhere along the way my Samsung account region was set to India. I had it updated to USA but they told me that in their “IoT cloud” this cannot be updated that the only way to set it up as USA is to create a new Samsung account and set everything up from scratch (of course after I reset everything on the original account).

The new SmartThings app doesn’t let you invite people from a different region so even though my account is in English and I don’t really care that it’s set to India on the backend I can’t invite other members to my SmartThings location who have a Samsung account set to USA in the backend. Since the old app is going away I will need to be able to invite other users in my home that use the app. I have a ton of devices and custom DTH’s etc. It’s going to be a hassle to set up everything all over again. I will set it all up via the new app since the old one is being phased out.

I have been playing around with Home Assistant. I’m tempted to switch to a more DIY self-hosted solution so that I’m not relying on a cloud system. Anyway, that’s a whole thread of its own.

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I had the same issue. My account was set in Germany and I had no way to change my address/location to the US when we moved here. Stupid really! So I created a whole new account in the US with a different email address. I called Samsung but they couldn’t make the change. really silly.
They should fix this.

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@blake.arnold, this issue should be resolved somehow as many people move countries during their life, and have partners from different countries as well. This is an extremely narrow-sighted feature by Samsung. It requires a different level of engagement by Samsung to be resolved in the future.

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Man what an awful pain this has been. I migrated to the new app and did the Samsung Account migration, when I tried to setup my partner’s phone instant roadblock due to us being in different regions, we’ve both always lived in Canada but apparently my account was somehow setup as the UK. Two tickets to samsung to request the change and they both get marked ‘Completed’ but still get the error and my account is still marked as UK. This is a giant pain and taking forever to get resolved, no idea what my next step is going to be at this point - setup a fake new account I guess for my wife and say I’m in the UK? Totally asinine.

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This goes the same way for years from Samsung, and you cannot have two Samsung accounts assigned to the same phone (at least to Samsung ones what I know for sure). So either wipe everything or make a new account but the result is the same pain.

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I just had the exact thing happen to me. I have always lived in Canada yet somehow my Samsung account was setup on the EU shard. My wife and I have been using the same Samsung accounts on the classic app for years without issue…but when I try to add my wife with the new app, it won’t let me. Now I’m completely screwed as support is telling me I have to start from scratch, wipe out my 200+ devices, countless automations and custom device handlers. Looking at switching platforms…I’m so fed up.

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@blake.arnold, will someone admit this issue and try to solve it? This is getting worse and worse…

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A bit of an update, it took about 3 weeks to finally get Samsung support to change the region of my account from the UK to Canada, to match my wife’s account which was already set to Canada. Unfortunately trying to ‘Invite’ her still generates the error message that both accounts must be in the same region. Signed out of both apps, removed apps and reinstalled, re-signed in, verified on the accounts.samsung.com website both regions are the same, and still get the error. Emailed smartthings support and it’s been 30 days wit no reply, and have followed up on the ticket weekly. This pile of garbage is about to go in the trash.

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Sharing my personal experience on this…

When I went through this I knew I had to set up all my devices on the hub from scratch so I took that opportunity to read up on Home Assistant so I can host my own home automation server. I use VPN so I don’t have mine opened to the outside. Some people switched to Hubitat. I’m not familiar with that one so I can’t comment on that.

Home Assistant has a learning curve but I’ve learned a lot with it and it’s very flexible.

Anyway, if you decide to stay with SmartThings, good luck! You will have to start over. I removed all my automations and devices one by one to make sure I inventoried and documented all my custom stuff like DTH’s, smartapps, etc and found alternatives to the ones that I could. But also how to set them back up on the ST hub if I were to stay with ST.

I did create a second samsung account and added my hub to it and before pairing any devices tested to make sure I could invite members and it worked. That was just to make sure it was all worth it but then the outages continued so I stayed with Home Assistant.

I have a samsung galaxy phone, galaxy tablet, and galaxy watch so the account thing really frustrated me because I also use samsung pay so I had to set that up from scratch too.

That’s just my 2 cents. Your mileage may vary.

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Hi, Ive tried everything, still getting the same error. was there any solution found?

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Hi I am also “living” in two countries, I had originally set up my Samsung Smartthings in Trinidad and while I still have my home there I am also in the US and have some Samsung appliances which are not supported in Trinidad so although I was able to add the house here, I cannot control those appliances on the same app. I have a complex setup in Trinidad integrating my DSC alarm, Arlo video along with numerous switches etc, so redoing things is not an easy option. Is there any movement on this issue?

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I have never moved but my first SmartThings account was set in US and the rest of the family’s accounts were in Finland. My first account was the owner of my first hub, and other accounts hubs were owned by other accounts.

I got Samsung Account support to change the region of my first account to Finland. Still, I couldn’t send invites between it and the other accounts.

Since I couldn’t access my second hub from my first account, I removed tried to remove the hub from that account. The result: it was also removed from my second account. (The second account was the owner of the location and hub.) The hub ended in a limbo where it kind of worked (many automations were running) but it couldn’t be accessed by any of my accounts.

I tried to factory reset the (second) hub and create a complete new set of accounts but after the reset, the hub couldn’t be claimed by a new account - only by my second account which was its owner before the reset.

I still can’t send invites between my first account and the other accounts.

So be warned, even changing the region of your Samsung account and factory resetting the hub may not solve the issues.

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My ST account thinks I’m in Canada. I’m in the US. I called support and was told the only way to fix is to reset and lose all my settings. I have so many Samsung things and things connected to ST and so many automations that this would be very indesirable.

How could you develop a system that didn’t allow you to correct / update account data like your Country that was incorrectly added to your account?

Luckily, there is Google Home that makes it very easy to manage and works with ST.

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