We bought a new telly back in February at Brandsmart USA (I never know whether the name is Brand Smart, or Brands Mart, or if the name is meant to be deliberately ambiguous that way)--our first leap into the HDTV water. It was a Samsung thirty-inch CRT.

When I first turned it on, a loud buzz emitted from it, lasting about a second. It was annoying, but once the picture came up, everything was fine. I should have taken this to be a warning.

A month or so ago, we lost stabilization on the horizontal sweep, resulting in wavy sides. Fortunately, this was one of those rare occasions on which we actually bought an extended warranty (it was past the ninety days from the manufacturer). After several days, we got a service call (about a week and a half ago, before I went to California). The serviceman took one look, and said that it was a bad power supply. He also told me that the noise at startup wasn't normal, and was also a bad supply, or perhaps a flyback transformer. If we'd reported it initially, we would have just gotten a new teevee.

But since it was past the ninety days, he was going to have to repair it. He told me that he'd have to order a new power supply from Samsung.

I called this morning (Monday), and they still didn't have it in, and wouldn't be able to even tell me when they would, unless I call them again on Wednesday (with the usual waits on hold through two different departments), and which time they could tell me.

How is it, in this day and age, that a major Korean electronics manufacturer can not only not have a part delivered to a major metropolitan area within a couple days, but not even know, after a week and a half, when they will?

Because shipping TVs is revenue and normal. Shipping parts is overhead and rare.

Yeah, what Andy said.

I have a brand new 30" Samsung HDTV because my 26" TV needed a new tuner board, and there "weren't any in the country" (they stopped making the 26" model 2 years ago or so). Since the cost and wait time to repair was as much or greater than the cost to replace, Samsung gave me the option.

I barely use the TV, though, since it's smaller than my 34" Sony XBR, which was considered the "Reference" HDTV while it was still being made. The Samsung is the "spare" TV for when I have people over for big sporting events, but might eventually make its way into my bedroom instead.

Andy, I disagree with some of what you said. I think the problem isn't just the "overhead" factor, it's a lack of customer service intent.

They simply don't care if you have to wait. They'll get X number of dollars for doing the repair from the manufacturer and they, Brandsmart, Circuit City, Silo, place the name of your big box electronics store here, just don't care if you have to be without your TV or whatever it is.

The other problem is that ALL the parts orders have to be batched at the store's home office parts center. They know in a few weeks or months how many TVs or stereos are going to go out. They also know that for every 1000 units sold, X% is going to need a P/S or flyback transformer. But they don't order even 40 knowing full well, they'll need 50 or 60 every month, they order them one at a time.

Automobile manufacturers and dealers play this same game.

And they do it because they don't care, Rand has already spent his money, he won't just buy another TV, so if he has to wait, THEY DON'T CARE!!

The individual techs, or even store managers might, but corporations don't care.

Except I'll remember it the next time I make a major electronics purchase, and it won't be from Brandsmart...

Rand-

From what I remember, Samsung has a 1 year warranty on their TVs. I logged the service repair call on my 26" TV 359 days after I bought it (like you, it happened well before that).

If they dropped that to 90 days, nobody bothered to tell me that when I had mine replaced... Sounds more like a store policy than the manuf. warranty.

Did you log the service call through Samsung, or through Brandsmart?

This is the very reason I went to Samsung's website to register my product with them (well, and because, after the fire, I'm much more careful to keep track of serial numbers and purchase dates). If Samsung has the record of your purchase and serial number, it's a rather straightforward call to log a service call under warranty. They generally send a licensed, authorized tech from a [somewhat] local service center to take a look and do the work, rather than leave it the hands of a tech monkey in a big box store.

As far as Steve's comments, it's quite possible that there was a bad batch of P/S's that got put into a batch of TVs, and that the nationwide supply in service centers is depleted. Parts supply issues in the early life-cycle of a product are quite common, especially if a bad batch made it into the chain. It's also possible that Samsung found the batch, and also found that the P/S's in their service centers were part of that same batch, and had them ALL recalled to Korea.

If the headaches and complaints are because of Brandsmart, then I'm not too surprised, and most of Steve's comments probably apply. But a lot of those same things can't be said for Samsung as a whole.

Blame the business schools and their interpretation of the profit & loss sheet. This has led to the liquidation of parts inventories as a normal way of doing business. Say hello to "Just In Time."

Sorry, as the resident MBA, I just had to butt in...

Blame the business schools and their interpretation of the profit & loss sheet...

Actually if it happened as described above (bad parts led to an inventory depletion), "Just in time" would have prevented, not caused, this problem. One of the ideas behind just in time is that you can't really know the propper amount of inventory - so you should eliminate inventory, and just make getting the part happen as quickly as possible. In this case, they probably thought that it was OK to use a slow shipping supplier, because they could just hold enough inventory to meet demand - but then demand changed, or inventory suddenly became useless, etc.

A typical CRT TV will last around 10 years before slowly failing in what, is now, typically, an uneconomic repair. That's pretty much been the case since the mid-80s.

Getting parts for most type of electrical good has been hard for decades, because it is rare these days and generally they expect that people would replace rather than repair.

I don't know about the US market, but a typically extended warrenty on this side of the pond would include a replace or repair clause for the duration of the cover.

Having a TV fail that quickly is statistically rare, so they don't prepare for it.

David,
what you say about just in time is a great idea for manufacturing, but not for repairs.

Anyone who has been involved can tell you that when a new piece of equipment comes out there is sometimes a breakdown of a certain part. The scenario is usually seen in the first few weeks or months, and all the repair facilities will be requesting that, or those, parts.

The problem arises, like I said before, when these companies refuse to just order that part in bulk. They track the percentage of break downs, but only use the information to get their money from the manufacturer. I've seen it at several companies I've worked for.

The bottom line of every company is best served by giving the best service to the customers. Rand has already said he won't buy from them again, multiply that by the hundreds or thousands of others who bought that TV. It's a marketing managers nightmare.

Yes, Steve - but compare this problem to HP's just in time repair system. When a part breaks, HP has the manufacturer FedEx a new part out to you - typically on the manufacturer's dime. This has several beneficial effects: First, the manufacturer is having to pay a lot for any defects, so the defect rate will go down. Second, the manufacturer presumably provides parts to more than just HP, so having the manufacturer hold the inventory is more effiecient. Finally, as you point out the customer is much happier - we all know the stuff happens, but a company that seems to take it seriously will earn future business.

Really, ordering in bulk is a really bad idea - especially for electronics. How quickly do electronics get replaced? Be generous, say 5 years for a part to go obscelete? OK, so that means that however much inventory you hold you are losing at least 20% in direct costs.

That said, obviously this company is doing neither just in time nor inventory holding - but I would bet that they thought they were holding inventory. It's sort of like politics, the art of the possible. It's possible to lower the time between request received and request fullfilled. It's not possible to have the correct inventory level - you either have too much or too little.

Its possible that the PSU itself or parts inside the PSU are not built by Samsung but indeed are outsourced by Samsung to a unknown Sub-contractor. That Sub-con may have additional Sub-sub-cons. I know over in the South-east Asia region that it's particulary cumbersome the way their electronic Fab businesses integrate. The RMA orders received into the parent companies ordering system have to generate purchase orders to respective sub-con entities who in turn generate lot orders through the manufacturing sites (who may need to retool for specified intervals) then pushed through shipping and distribution and back to the parent company for final packaging and then back through additonal shipping distribution chains.

To many variable that one indeed can receive a N/A on purchase order request time intervals.