HOUSTON – Samsung's huge washing machine recall has millions of customers stuck with washers that don't work as they were advertised.
The company's remedy has a lot of consumers frustrated and worried about their family's safety.
A Houston woman told consumer expert Amy Davis, after her experience, the concern is warranted.
Sandy Strong scheduled a repair on Samsung's recall website in November, just as the company asked owners to do.
Two days before her scheduled appointment, she received an email letting her know she had to call Samsung to confirm the time or no one would show up.
"You can see call after call," she said as she showed Davis the call log on her iPad. She called Samsung 64 times to confirm.
"I would get a message that said, 'This is an important recall and you're so important to us. Please hold on. I'm sorry. Due to a high volume of calls, we will disconnect you.' Click." Strong said she heard recordings more than 60 times while trying to get through to someone at Samsung.
When the company finally sent a repairman to her home in November, it was a Dish Network employee.
"Which seemed rather odd to us anyway that a TV company was doing the repairs," Strong said."But they said, 'Oh no. They're trained.'"
But after the tech had the back off her washer, he discovered he actually wasn't trained on her specific model.
"He was very nice about it," said Strong. "He called Samsung, put the washing machine back... and we were waiting for another appointment."
The next time Sandy did a load of laundry, a flood of water gushed through the ceiling from the third floor, where her washer is to the second floor.
"I'm sitting here in the living room, and suddenly water starts pouring through the ceiling vents. I mean pouring!" Strong told Davis.
The carpet in her upstairs hallway was soaked.
"We grabbed every towel in the house," she said. "We're mopping here. We're mopping there. I'm on the phone trying to call Samsung and DISH. 'Oh we're sorry. There's not much we can do,'" she said they told her.
She finally got an appointment with Dish five days later, but the day before the appointment, Dish canceled by email.
The Strongs discovered the Dish employee simply forgot to re-attach the washer hose, leaving them with wet carpet and padding and a washer at risk of exploding as more than 700 already have.
Even if Dish had made the repair, consumers say it doesn't actually fix the machine. Samsung says after the so-called repair, customers can only wash heavy loads like bedding on the delicate cycle.
"It's like saying on the airbag recall, we'll put a heavy duty strap on your steering wheel and if you just drive under 20 miles an hour with 2 light passengers, you'll be fine," explained Strong.
Samsung scheduled Strong's next repair appointment with a technician from a North Texas company called National In-Home Service and Installation or NISI. That tech was no-show; and now Strong says she's kind of glad.
"They have an F from the BBB," she said. "They had one-star ratings on Yelp for never showing up, never answering calls."
The Houston Better Business Bureau has not been able to get the company to respond to consumer complaints.
"If a repairman does come out, they either are unable to fix it or they say it's fixed and the problem comes back," said Susan Burdick of the Houston BBB, describing the complaints the bureau has received about the company.
"There's only Dish Network and NISI in all of Texas?" Strong asked. "This is a big state. Houston's a big city. I can't believe there's nobody else qualified to do this repair."
No one from NISI returned our calls for comment. A Samsung spokesperson sent is this statement:
"In coordination with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, we are offering consumers a choice between a free in-home repair with an additional one-year warranty, or a pro-rated rebate that takes into account the age of the machine and covers installation of a new machine and removal of the old machine. Consumers who purchased a recalled washer 30 days before the recall announcement on November 4, 2016 are eligible for a full refund from their original place of purchase.
We have significantly expanded our capacity to provide repairs to consumers as quickly as possible by working with several service partners who have a nationwide presence and the capability of doing thousands of in-home service visits a day. We have successfully completed hundreds of thousands of in-home repairs, and we are listening to and learning from every consumer’s experience in order to constantly improve our processes.
We are sorry to hear about Ms. Strong’s experience and will be reaching out to her to apologize for the inconvenience and offer support. We are working with our authorized service partners to learn more about what happened. Anyone with questions about their washer or a service visit should contact us directly at 1-866-264-5636."
Samsung then followed up with Strong and offered her a full refund plus the cost of hauling away her old machine. Dish sent her a check to cover the cost of her carpet repair and cleaning estimate.
If you have problems like Strong's with Samsung's recall remedy, you should report it to the CPSC by calling the Consumer Hotline at 800-638-2772.