Samsung Email Support Page - No support for SGP series

[greenman]

I went on line last night to try and get answers to my questions about this device. This is the page:
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/ow.../YP-G70CWY/XAA

I clicked the 'email support' button, and got the 'Email Product Support' form thus:


There is no support for product group 'mobile'. Consequently, you cannot choose 'mp3 player' for 'product type', nor 'galaxy' for 'product sub-type, etc. I spent about 20 minutes on support chat trying to explain that there was no way for me to get support for the SGP through the form. The rep was very courteous and apologetic. He suggested that I choose any of the phones and just explain the situation and they would forward it to the right department.

The product has been out for quite a while now. It's enough that it's entirely marginalized by the media... I get the opinion that even Samsung's own people are giving the device sub-category short shrift, all because it's not a phone.

Frankly, I think it's one of the best devices available for android. It's got more capabilities than any ipod. This device truly fits the anything-but-ipod meme.

I wish Samsung would get their collective stuff together and make an option for product support in the form for SGP's.

[CrowdAds]

[omokhowa]

I was at that same site earlier,spoke with a"samsung technician' about the lack of support for this product. Infact the original customer service agent does not seem to know about these set of galaxy player series because she kept asking if it was a phone.I wanted to send an email of my issue since none of the phone specialists were able to .There best suggestion for the voice search issue on my player was to contact Google!

[greenman]

Update - Samsung still apparently refuses to include support for the 'YP-' mobile devices on their site. What's even more frustrating is that my product details don't show up in the 'my account' page when I log in at
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/account
Also notice that there is 1 support question, but it is not properly listed or available to me.



Since I didn't see it there, I tried registering again.
Notice that 'Mobile' is available from the product registration page, even if it is not available from the product support page.


When I submitted this form, I got this:


You may imagine my frustration with Samsung's support system, especially when 'Mobile' is not among their choices from the product support page. That basically means you can't choose any mp3 player, let alone a YP-G70:


I've not gotten any response from Samsung support.
I'm emailing Samsung's US PR firm in hopes that they will make something good come out of this.

Surely Samsung would not intentionally make it hard for Wifi-only device owners to contact them...

Samsung creates a lot of MP3 players, and has done for a while now. In all this time, has anybody else noticed this serious lack of support?

[TapperP]

I doubt I will ever need support from them, but that's unfortunate.

[GeorgeP1111]

Yup, I sorta ran into the same wall when I called their support number. The folks there are very gracious to the extreme, spend all the time typing and verifying the issue, putting on hold to ask someone else, but never come up with a answer.

I called and asked why both my home routers require a Static IP from my SGP5 whereas they do not from my other tablet and laptops. Also asked why the compass sensor freezes on all the Compass, GPS, and Tool apps, and that I have read others say that this was not the case until they upgraded to Gingerbread from Froyo.

Lot of typing and holds. Said they had to check into this further and would call me back. Got a call the following day asking if my problems were resolved. Then I told them they were not I was transferred to a "Level 2 Tech". More typing and holds. Asked if he could call me back in 2-3 hours. That was 3 days ago!!

But they sure are polite there :-)

George

[greenman]

Their Public Relations Contact is Edelman: samsungpr@edelman.com .
I've written to them, as well as Steven Behm in the Atlanta office: steven.behm@edelman.com .

Samsung is likely leasing support from a third-party company that uses representatives and answer scripts. The phone and chat reps probably don't have scripts for the YP-mobile android stuff and are so used to fielding questions about phones that their first off-script go-to question is 'What model is your phone?' The tier-2 techs are basically script reps that have been around long enough to handle stuff off-script better than a beginner. But if they don't have the script for the product in question, they can't call you back, because they don't have a company-approved answer. They don't actually work for Samsung. Reps on the floor have no way to actually reach Samsung. They're almost part-time and go home after their stint knowing they're basically hand-holding and powerless to actually make a difference. A lot of stuff slips through the cracks with third-party support because the reps aren't paid to care, and aren't empowered to talk to a real person from Samsung about it.

The compass thing is still the same in Gingerbread 2.3.5. Google Star Map is a trip because things are either on the opposite side of the sky from where they exist in reality, or when you get to them, the map flips and tells you to look in the opposite direction. I got it to work the way it's supposed to once. Since then, it's as if the poles are flipped. No compass apps give a clear orientation. GPS is good for finding position, vector speed and direction but can't tell you what your device's orientation is for the world. I know other Samsung devices - mainly phones - have no trouble with device orientation, so I think the problem is a bug in their gps stack. I'm not able to get to them, so I can't tell them about it.

The dialer won't let me use skype or another VOIP system to dial, but I know that Samsung phones will allow the dialer to choose whatever compatible app they want to dial with.

The bluetooth stack is flaky. It takes more than a few seconds for the device to recognize the keyboard if it hasn't been working with it for a few minutes. Then when it does, it either kicks you out of the dialog box you're typing in, or it kicks you out of the app. It also has a weird command option thing to reach simple things like the @ or punctuation ordinarily reached with the shift key. On several occasions, I'm sure bluetooth flakiness has caused my device to reboot without reason.

Lastly, the voice search shows that it should be updated in the market, but when I go to the market to update it, I get 'This app is not compatible with this device'. Surely this is hogwash because I use the voice search all the time.

Samsung needs to honor support for their YP-mobile android devices because we have serious questions that need answers.

[GeorgeP1111]

Originally Posted by greenman

they can't call you back, because they don't have a company-approved answer.

Ah.... That explains why the 2-3 hours for a return call has gone for 3 days now.

But they sure were polite folks.

Oh Well, it would be nice to have good customer support for our Players from Samsung, but at least we have all of us in this group. From what I have seen, you all seem to get the problems sorted out pretty good.

And.... We're polite folks too.... Right?

George

[tcat]

...and don't forget the battery % issues... but are all these issues Samsung or Google? Either way, Samsung should get them fixed! So many things are right... would be nice to make it close to perfect!

[Lagoo56]

At least we have support on the XDA forums and ROMs are being developed,a few are already available.

[Goucham]

Originally Posted by tcat

...and don't forget the battery % issues... but are all these issues Samsung or Google? Either way, Samsung should get them fixed! So many things are right... would be nice to make it close to perfect!

We haven't yet reached a year with the latest models so it is still relatively early in the product life cycle. I don't expect (and I'm not sure that I'd want) ICS but we could still see a firmware update to deal with the most common issues.