Samsung Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Over Exploding Galaxy Note 7 (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 troubles are continuing -- the company was just hit with a class action lawsuit in New Jersey focused on recovering cell phone contract fees for customers who were left with an unusable phone for several weeks. The suit has three initial plaintiffs, who say that they were left without a phone for the several weeks between when Samsung and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission originally issued a recall and told consumers to "power down" their devices (September 9), and when the company began offering replacement devices (September 21). It also notes that Samsung didn't make enough replacement devices immediately available -- which is probably a good thing considering that the company ultimately had to recall those as well. "Samsung informed consumers they would have to wait several days, and even weeks in many cases, before receiving a replacement smartphone," the suit alleges. "During this time, and as a result of Defendant failing to provide consumers with an adequate replacement, consumers continued to incur monthly device and plan charges from their cellular carriers for phones they could not safely use." The total recall and destruction of Galaxy Note 7 phones is unprecedented for a modern smartphone, so there isn't much to look at in order to project whether the case will succeed. "Samsung has agreed to recall and reimburse the cost of the device, but their customers have had to continue to pay on their data and voice plans during the time they had to make their device inoperative until they received their replacement device," Richard McCune, one of the lawyers representing the class, told me. "That is the loss that the case is focused on."

Comments

How much is standard for butthurt?

[Overzeetop]

'Cause there's a lot of butthurt going around on the Note 7 forums. Jesus - it's a phone. A nice one, but still just a phone. I get it if you were one of those weird edge cases where you got stuck in Bora Bora after the recall but before you had to fly home. Or you traded your Note 4 for $200 to get it and now you can't get your original phone back. That sucks - no doubt. Or you tried to save $100 by buying one off of Craigslist and now it's hard to return. I'm going to call that a "learning experience," but I digress...

I had two of them, they were great. I was sad to hear of the full recall because there's nothing out there like it in functionality. But, in the end, I'm basically in the same position I would have been if the Note 7 had never come along. If I'd wanted a replacement I could have, like 90% of the people out there, called up my rep and had them ship me a different phone, and send my N7 back in. In fact, after the second one, I did. And it will take an entire month for them to credit me for the phones I sent in. But in the end I pretty much used a Note 7 for free, and got a $25 "we're sorry" credit and a $225 "please choose one of our other phones" discount ($75 from Samsung, $150 from the seller). If you can't tell, I'm finding it hard to see the value in such a suit, and I kind of hope the judge tells them to go pound sand because the lawyers are the only ones who are going to make any money in the deal.