Outsourcing is all the rage in modern times. Every company is hoping to score a contract for a good price and then push the workload off to the local guy. That way they make the big bucks and the local guy can get some money as well. There are plenty of insane little stories of outsourcing like the ones for the "rebuilding" contracts in Iraq, which were awarded to big US companies for unbelievable sums. These then turned around and outsourced that work to a small local company in the country for a fraction of the price.

The Onion News Network - a satire based on real life big shots like CNN and NBC - has been going after that issue with their YouTube video of personal outsourcing of americans. This brings me to my current issue: Samsung and their warranty service.

I happen to have a 30 inch monitor for my workstation, which did not seem to take any DVI signal anymore, so I call up the Samsung hotline from Austria, just to be connected to their german call center - so far nothing out of the ordinary. They were quick about taking down my details and setting up a support ticket along with the promise of a pickup within 24 hours along with the confirmation that the issue will be solved within 10 working days. So I get a call from the transportation firm to confirm a pickup date and time, at which the LCD monitor is picked up. Once again - so far so good, but this is where the real fun begins.

Samsung has elected a local company here in Austria - called Tectraxx - to take care of warranty issues for them, that being the first level of outsourcing. These have then outsourced the actual repair to another company called AVMS. So my monitor - which I require for work - starts on a wonderous journey from my home town to Vienna, where it is checked to confirm the defect, then packed up again and sent onward to another company, which then rechecks the item again. I should note at this point, that other monitor manufacturers like Dell manage to do a next business day swap - no questions asked. So after a whooping 7 business days, my unit manages to make it to AVMS, which actually promptly manages to isolate the problem, but does not have any parts in stock. Another classic problem when outsourcing - sure you can repair units, but you still need to order and stock the needed parts, which takes time. Now with 7 out of the promised 10 days burned away by a trip all over Austria, the unit is sitting there waiting for a replacement part. That part then does not manage to get there within the quoted 2 to 3 business days, but instead takes twice the time.

So, now we are at 13 business days.

At this point, the unit is ready to be shipped back to Tectraxx - yes not directly to me. It takes 3 business days for them just to pick the unit up from AVMS and another day to receive it. It is then checked again and sent onward to me. Needless to say, I opened the warranty ticket on June 25th and I have yet to receive the unit back. The guys at Tectraxx cannot promise a delivery by the end of the week - friday the 24th of Juli as they have no information from AVMS yet - great.

Sure some of you may say "huh, not even a month", but in my case the lack of efficiency, communication and inability to plan ahead is so blatantly obvious. Once my unit reached Tectraxx I was no longer able to call them to get an update on the status. Samsung, Tectraxx, AVMS and the transport firm all have my issue logged under seperate tickets with no information beyond their duty along the chain. It also begs the question if it were not cheaper for Samsung to invest in some infrastructure themselves instead of outsourcing everything.

So this leads me to ask the question: "Have you had any horrid warranty issues?" Not so much ones where it just took long, but one were the defective item was pushed down such an inefficient chain instead of doing the obvious? If so, let us know.