Let me begin this review by stating that Amazon.com has been VERY good about helping me with my problem. Their return policy and customer service are among the best in the industry.
NOW: Samsung is a different story.
I bought their UN55B8000 television based on the specs, the online reviews and Samsung's own website. The screen size and the price point seemed great for us. When it arrived, it was even more beautiful in person. Sadly, the picture quality was awful. I know that electronic devices can be perfect out of the box or DOA out of the box, so I was a bit disappointed when I installed the TV and found out that it wasn't working properly. The backlight was horribly uneven (more than just the typical "edge lit LED screens are uneven" stuff... This was very noticeable on all inputs). Any all-black screen was marred by clouds of white light. Worse, there were digital artifacts around all edges and contrasty spots. It looked like a B&W checkerboard surrounded everything, and it was also visible on all HDMI inputs (Dish DVR and XBox) AND on our Samsung BluRay player. The sound occasionally dropped out, and there were weird all-magenta screen flashes randomly happening. You get the point. This was a defective TV.
Unaware of Amazon's customer-friendly return policy, I called Samsung to take advantage of their in-home warranty service. I'm not going to spend pages and pages ranting about how awful the experience was. I'll just say it was awful. They came out three times (VERY late, two out of three of them) and could not fix the problems. I thought it would be a no-brainer to have Samsung step up and replace the TV with a working model. NOPE! They've given me the run-around for almost two months. They finally said that the service tech had not specifically written "deemed unrepairable", so they could not replace it unless he did. Hours of back-and-forth calls later, they finally deemed it unrepairable, and said they'd replace the TV... Except that they apparently do not have any of that model available in any of their warehouses. They told me I should just wait for them to contact me. They do not know when that will happen.
I checked Amazon's site, and they said they'd take back the TV right now and replace it with a brand new one. I've owned other Samsung products in the past, so I'm not overly worried about getting another lemon. I'm just very, very disappointed in Samsung's terrible customer service. It's rare to find a company who is adamant about NOT caring a bit about customer (dis) satisfaction. Google "samsung customer service sucks" for many more stories just like mine...
And again, I have to say that Amazon is a stellar company. Thanks to them for rescuing me from further dealings with Samsung's corporate flunkies!
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