So I was just playing around on Samsung’s website today and found this.
While I understand there’s a potential for people to lie in order to get trade-in credit (especially because Samsung typically has good trade-in deals) and then not actually trade anything in, could they not think of a better way to do this?
For example, why not charge the full price and then subtract the trade-in value upon receipt of the phone? Or charge the discounted price, but then charge the rest if they don’t receive the trade-in? Like sure if you charge full price then not as many people can afford it. And if you charge partial price and then someone doesn’t have the funds to cover the rest, that can be a pain for Samsung to sort out. But either of those is better than flat-out threatening the customer.
What happens if your trade-in gets lost or stolen in shipping? Now Samsung locks your new phone and you’re completely screwed?
While I’m sure we all know that privacy on mobile devices is basically non-existent, and whether or not you actually “own” your device is a grey area (especially when you’re not buying it outright), now they’re practically just outright saying they’re a creepy, dystopian, big-brother-type company who has a backdoor into your phone and is totally willing to use it against you.
Wait, so this what they’ll do to the new phone if the old one doesn’t meet those criteria? Where exactly did you find this on their site? It is just Samsung who’s doing this?
I mean, I’m not usually big on the whole Internet pitchfork routine, but yeah that’s pretty messed up. I stopped buying Samsung stuff after the whole SSD bug, followed by immolation phone, followed by exploding washing machine thing, and it looks like this might be one more reason they’ll stay on the Do Not Buy list.
They will lock down the new phone you ordered if they do not receive the trade-in or it doesn’t meet those requirements.
If you select the option to trade-in when you’re buying a new phone.
I’m not sure if it’s just Samsung, but I know for instance when I switched back to T-Mobile, they do not do this. If you fail to do your trade-in, you just lose the promotional discount and end up paying full price. But you still get to use your phone.
Ya for me personally, I was able to look past hardware failures and software bugs as long as they’re handled somewhat reasonably. Mistakes happen. But this isn’t a manufacturing problem or a glitch. It’s not an accident. This is company policy, which they have direct control over.
Yeah, I mean why would you be doing a trade-in if it wasn’t messed up in some way? I wouldn’t expect some of those criteria to be all that uncommon either.
Well I could see like for people who like to upgrade every year, or if you have a phone that’s just aging and want something new, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it necessarily.
Also, back to whether or not other companies do something similar, there is Apple:
I wouldn’t say the comparisons line up completely because the reasons aren’t the same, but I’m not sure it’s any better.
Yeah that’s kind of what I mean. I’ve never actually traded a phone into the manufacturer. I just send it to that non-profit which provides old phones to people in the military who don’t have a way to call home, or to some shelter or something. If it still works fine, but I just want something new, or it can’t hold a charge for very long or something, then that’s not something I’d send back to the manufacturer regardless, but maybe that’s just me.
Shenanigans like this make options like that look even better.
I hear that, but I just think it’s a a very heavy-handed response where there are less intrusive alternative actions for Samsung to get their money. Maybe if they said they’d remove the backdoor once they verified your trade-in, that might be okay. In fact, I think that would put them above other companies for me because then there’s no backdoor. But they’re not going to do that.
Yep. I don’t like the backdoor itself, but I’m also not going to have any sympathy for the thief and the action itself is warranted. I just wish the action didn’t require having some sort of backdoor.
If you buy a phone from Samsung and don’t fulfill your end of the deal, there are other ways they can get their money, such as going to collections. Samsung already knows who you are when you do this, not like someone stealing from a store.
Lol true. I’m sure there are tons of companies people would be pissed at if they actually read through the lawyer speak. At least Samsung is being upfront.
They can block your IMEI, idk if they have a backdoor (i dont think so) or if you sign in with a special Samsung account for the phone tracking system (i dont have a Samsung phone)
But blocking IMEI is really common practice, you still have the phone it will not connect to the tower to get data, but everything else works…
I do wonder whether Samsung’s policy is due in part due to the disastrous Note 8? Even after Samsung completely stopped selling the phone and had issued a full recall, there were still some users who refused to return their phone. It kind of raises the question of what would happen if a Note 8 exploded whilst it was in the luggage hold of an airplane… I’m not saying I agree with Samsung’s policy but there are certain circumstances where you could make a compelling argument for it.
I wonder how much of this disabling would persist into an AOSP/Lineage install?
IMEI blocking would be unaffected, but anything else would probably have no effect; unless unlocking the boot loader is prevented via Factory Reset Protection, or something like that. I know GrapheneOS warns against even carrier-sold Pixel phones because of a persistent-partition carrier setting that can prevent bootloader OEM unlocking:
