Steve, Mike and myself wrote an e-mail to Samsung ODD. Hopefully we’ll get a reply on this thread that won’t read like a generic P.R. statement written by some secretary at Samsung ODD. Personally I’m half-expecting something in the lines of:
[I]Dear Samsung customers
We really regret the fact that you have been experiencing problems with some of our products, blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah bla blah…[/I] (couple of paragraphs of more generic P.R. rubbish here)[I] …blah blah blah… [/I] (and it will probably finish with something like this): [I]Samsung is the market leader in…blah, blah, blah, blah blah… We are seriously commited at providing the best…blah blah blah[/I] (you can imagine the rest…)
[I]Yours sincerely
Some secretary at Samsung ODD
(We regret the fact that our higher management was too busy planning the release of our new x26, x28 and x30 models to reply to your message)[/I]
Anyway, here’s the e-mail Mike sent them:
[I]I burn a lot of hard disk backups for our clients. The burns must always be of decent quality, otherwise clients won’t be able to restore their computers from the discs. That’s why I always use top quality Verbatim DVD+R discs (media code MCC 004 and Taiyo Yuden). These are some of the best discs in the market, and I never had any problems burning them with any of our other non-Samsung x22 and x24 drives.
Since I started using your latest models SH-S222 and SH-S223 (all variants), I’ve had nothing but trouble. I have had many failed burns, (which is quite embarassing when it happens in front of clients), and even the burns that complete are of extremely poor quality. Obviously you can’t have that with something as important as a computer backup or people’s personal data. Our clients trust us to do reliable backups for them, and it just won’t happen with these models.
Instead of correcting serious issues with your existing models, you keep dishing out new models. This is not a good sign. Samsung’s optical disc drive reputation is quickly going down the drain. It seems to be that I’m not alone in this matter. If you still care about the opinions of your customers, have a look at this thread:
This thread is by far not the only one. club.myce.com is full of negative results and opinions regarding your latest models. You are currently dishing out some of the worst DVD writers ever produced, and people are not stupid, they’re starting to recognize the negative pattern. Just google around and you’ll see what your customers think of your recent products.
Most people in the IT business that I know of, wouldn’t touch your products anymore. Personally I’d never buy another Samsung drive, and I’m most definitely not the only one. I sincerely hope that you can do something about it. Employ better engineers. Invest more money in firmware development. Fix existing issues BEFORE releasing new useless models. It’s easy to lose touch with reality when your higher management is wrapped up in its corporate bubble. It’s easy to lose touch with your customers’ needs. I hope that you still have some common sense left in order to understand that your competitors are doing a much better job in covering those needs. I hope that you can see the obvious conclusion: If you’re going to continue this way you will diminish and eventually lose your share of the market, and you’ll only have yourselves to blame for this.
A lot of Samsung customers would love to see a REAL reply, maybe from the people responsible for your firmware development. We eagerly await your answers at http://club.myce.com/f105/samsung-odd-has-totally-lost-plot-304482/
Best regards
Mike Lawrence
Senior Technical Support Analyst[/I]
Lets see if they reply. Both Mike and Steve think they won’t bother, I hope they will. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this. In any way, Steve has personal contacts with the Metro and the Evening Standard newspapers here in London, and a specialized article on the subject is not out of the question. If they ignore our remarks here and fail to provide solutions, the P.R. damage for them could be bigger than they think.