Starting to lose faith

I hate to say it but I’m losing faith. I’ve been trying now for three weeks to resolve an issue with the Samsung UK online shop over a missing presence sensor - the sealed box was empty when I opened it. I’ve had another newish presence sensor die because the battery clip has broken and now tonight a motion sensor has died. If it was a simple matter of sending it back I would. However the Samsung UK Shop being very tardy with email responses also requires you to make a video of the failed sensor failing and then upload it to YouTube. For the price of the sensors I find they are not as robust as they should be. Maybe I will go back to buying from where returning a dodgy item is a five minute job.

I can’t speak for you experience but I’ve found the service from the guys at support@smartthings.co.uk to be really good. There’s a lot going on with the ST motion sensors at the moment. Have you got a Duracell or a Panasonic battery in it?

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Agree, support at smartthings are way better than Samsung shop customer support staff. They are not the same.

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@brumster & @a4refillpad the Samsung UK guys in Twitter are very good. If is just the UK Shop guys that are useless. I’m not impressed.

I think this motion sensor is brown bread. I’ve tried two brand new Panasonic batteries which I know are working and no response.

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You’ll have to go through the shop for the missing sensor but raise a ticket with the UK support guys for the dead motion sensor. I’ve had one replaced and the device was very good. They didn’t ship me the replacement unit until they had received the old one but I got a new sensor (the old one had a knackered battery contact).

Don’t lose faith just yet. I’ve had it installed for over 18 months, sure it has problems but it’s much more stable than it has been. It also has a level of flexibility I admire, most of that is down to CoRE (plenty of credit to ady624 for that) which provides the flexibility to do just about anything and everything.

Good luck!

There are different teams responsible for different resources. UK Shop is different than SmartThings troubleshooting - if you ever have issues with agents during troubleshooting, do not hesitate to mention me. You can try to ping me on shop issues, but I am often limited in the ability to make changes there… that said, RMA inventory should be available again shortly

Just an update. I got a call last weekend from one of the Shop customer service people. I was offered a ten pound discount voucher as compensation for the length of time taken to resolve my query - which I turned down. I told them that getting a replacement wasn’t what I was pushing for as I had the box unopened for over a month. That seemed to perk him up and now I dont think I will hear anything further.

I will not buy anything from the UK Samsung shop again and will make sure I warn anyone thinking of doing so. As much as I hate to say it Currys will now fulfil my ST needs as I can get an immediate exchange / refund.

Even if you said yes, the voucher might not turn up anyway like mine. That team provide the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered.

I have a similar situation. I have had problems with a particular muti-sensor in my system which I feel that I have conclusively proven is faulty.

At first, the email support was very good. Even though I had given a detailed account of my troubleshooting steps I still respected the customer service representative’s advice. However after implementing their suggestions this still did not work.

Since insisting on a replacement the email replies have gone silent even after chasing. The initial responses were prompt but now I require a replacement I feel ignored.

It is a shame really as I regularly recommended products, services and perform installs for friends, family, and colleagues but at present due to the poor support I would struggle with this.

I too had 2 faulty motion sensors and a presence sensor which were DOA. The quality of the sensors does appear to be questionable…

Hang tight… shipment of replacement devices just arrived in the UK and we should be fulfilling warranty orders shortly. Thanks for the patience!

Hi Aaron,

I am having problems getting a RMA for my faulty device. I am being told it is not a hardware fault but a firmware issue. I cannot believe this I have no issues with my other sensors. It appears to me that due to the stock issues, support are avoiding an RMA. Please can you help?

Kind Regards

Just to add, support cannot confirm the firmware version to which this ‘bug’ relates and so cannot say if the firmware version of my device matches. This is extremely poor support and is surely a basic troubleshooting requirement.

Samsung Shop support were very happy when I told them I had given up on getting a repalcement but just wanted to know my case was being investigated. Never a word heard from them again. And never again shall another pound of mine be spent in the shop.

@rednose66 Thats pretty terrible! Sorry to hear that!

I would call up your card company and they will reverse the transaction. If you have kept any emails or call records then you can submit those as proof of the ongoing dispute (plus this thread). The card company is responsible for reclaiming it back from Samsung Shop and it will leave a mark to help anybody else with similar issues. It has happened to me twice in 10 years of significant online transactions and both times they refunded me, though one required quite a bit of proof since I ordered 5 phones for work and only 2 arrived so was a very high value. Seems sadly common that companies have poor stock control in their warehouses.

Same experience here with support UK. I’ve more than proven to them that one of my motion sensors was faulty, but since I live in NL and not in the UK, they have over and over again refused to replace it under warranty, and yet they happily let amazon.co.uk sell these sensors all over Europe. Lately I had to wait over one week just to get an email response from them but I’m done with it now. I managed to shove the sensor back to Amazon and will never ever buy an ST branded sensor again. I’m trying the Xiaomi, which are 1/3 of the price and seem to work well, and now Ikea is also selling cheaper sensors nowadays, so :wink:

Oscar_Hierro it certainly sounds as though the UK Samsung support are far less customer focused
than the US.i will try not to buy ST prducts direct from them again.

I’ve tried the Orvibo sensors and they worked well at a much
lower price. I’m trying trying the Xiaomi ones now as well. I still use the
ST motion sensors as I’ve had mixed results with the cheaper ones.

As much as I like the Smartthings system I too have had a horrible time with poorly designed and manufactured sensors. 3 of 3 presence sensors broken ( 1 replaced, 2 working with lightly broken battery housings, and one reassembled and working with an epoxy fix). Of 3 multi sensors 2 have broken and been replaced and one of the replacements has broken again but is still working with some paper wedging the battery back into contact. Of the 9 sensors i originally purchased and the 5 warranty replacements, 3 were delivered with dead batteries and at least 3 more had batteries that died within the first month.

Seriously Samsung you are doing yourself no favours here, your devices are very poorly designed. Presence sensor battery holders break every single time a battery is replaced (following the online instructions), the plastics used in the manufacture of these devices is of poor quality, brittle and prone to fracture.

I truly love the system but am beginning to have difficulty recommending it given the abysmal quality of your sensors.

To anyone purchasing I would recommend Amazon, they have been very good with returns. I am getting worried that they will tire of my continued replacements, so I am now fixing with glue, paper wedges and living with the little broken battery holder tabs.

Samsung you should prioritise a reinvestment in some decent materials engineering and get these poor quality devices sorted out or else the reputation of this great system will be permanently damaged.

I would recommend that you keep returning. Amazon may see there is an systemic issue and halt sales until it’s resolved. I have seen them do this on other items. That would send another message to Samsung.

I have had the same experience with the battery clips on multiple sensors breaking off. Currently I am using Xiaomi sensors. At the much lower price point it will be far less painful if I do need to replace any.