First Click: Will you buy another Samsung phone?
October 14th, 2016
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Every year a company called Interbrand comes out with its Best Global Brands report. This year’s report came out on October 5th and ranked Samsung at 7th position, ahead of Amazon and Mercedes-Benz, and up 14 percent in “brand value” over last year. Good job Samsung! Weirdly, Interbrand failed to acknowledge Samsung’s much publicized September 2nd recall of the dangerous Galaxy Note 7 flagship, almost as if it had no bearing on the brand’s perceived value.
This week Samsung decided to cut its losses with the Galaxy Note 7 after admitting that the supposedly safe replacement models were also catching fire. The entire debacle has raised all sorts of questions about Samsung’s quality controls, the integrity of its supply chain, and what kind of corporate culture could produce the same life-threatening mistake not once, but twice on the very same device. Naturally, the joking began.
Some wondered what other Samsung devices might be affected:
From the company that brought you exploding phones… here, stick these in your skull pic.twitter.com/ehLD8mXJ0q
— dan mentos (@DanMentos) October 11, 2016
While others poked fun at Samsung's inability to identify the issue:
#Samsung engineers right now.pic.twitter.com/m2yoB8laE7
— Miguel (@mike089) October 11, 2016
The recall was a mess from the start, even before the second recall. Samsung still doesn’t seem to know the exact problem in either the original or the replacement phones, and that’s creating concern about the integrity of existing phones like the similarly named Galaxy S7, and whatever phone comes next. Nevertheless, some people are stupidly refusing to return their Galaxy Note 7s because, let’s face it, it’s one of the best phones ever made… when it’s not exploding.
So the question I have for you, dear reader, is how does this make you feel about the Samsung brand when it comes to buying a new phone?
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