In just under three weeks Samsung will re-release the Galaxy Note 7 to those who still have an interest.

For those of you who are unaware, the Note 7 was recalled as many of them turned into a fireball due to a battery issue. A small problem that could result in third degree burns, death, or the loss of your home and all your personal effects such as furniture, photos and kids.

Anyway a mere four weeks later Samsung are ready with a replacement model worldwide. In the world of product manufacturing and distribution that’s as fast as you can say “Burning Down The House”.

While many of you may think this is a good thing, I have other suspicions.

My suspicion is that even by using air freight for the new phones, which is extremely expensive, four weeks is an impossible time frame to;

• Determine the fault in the battery component
• Find a solution to that fault
• Redesign the battery and retool the factory or source new materials
• Manufacture the product again in Korea
• Quality check and test the new product
• Package the new product
• Freight the product worldwide to Samsung warehouses or distributors
• Distribute products to your local retailer

My theory is that this new Note 7 is actually not that new at all, but is the actually second manufacture batch with a known fault resolved, hence the speed at which the model has been produced.

This of course means, if my theory is correct, that Samsung released a phone onto the world market with the full knowledge that it could burst into flames. They just dumped it on an unsuspecting market and hoped for the best. Samsung are fortunate that there have been no deaths as yet and it hasn’t become an issue for a coroner to investigate.

The Note 7 was rushed out to be released ahead of the Apple iPhone 7, however in the end this rush only created the embarrassment of having to announce a recall days before the iPhone 7 launch.

It would appear that Samsung may have placed beating Apple to launch ahead of the safety of your family.

For those that think this may be stretch consider this, the last major product recall in Australia for products that caught fire was for a washing machine. A Samsung washing machine.

This washing machine that caused several fires was sold by Samsung into family homes with exposed wiring on its internals, this is a sign of poor manufacture practices and appalling quality checks. To their credit Samsung finally recalled the products and later resold them to customers. To the surprise of customers however the repair work did not involve new wiring, it involved a plastic shopping bag being taped around still exposed wiring.  Welcome to Samsung Quality Service and Repair. Nothing the average punter couldn’t do themselves after a trip to Coles. This of course led to more fires, and Samsung were under the threat of a coronial Inquiry

If you still think I’m being harsh bear this in mind.

Samsung were recently made to make a section of the fine print in their Smart TV Manuals far more visible to their customers. That section involved the voice control feature for the TV, one of its key selling features.

The fine print told customers if this feature was turned on that their conversations in front of the TV were being recorded, uploaded  and the content passed on to marketing and market research firms. Customer’s private conversations were being recorded and on sold for marketing purposes.

Basically, Samsung were bugging your home, and burying the part where they have to tell you in the fine print. Below is part of that fine print.

“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”

It is unclear who these marketing firms clients were, but people have some pretty private conversations in front of the TV. Next time you’re having sex on the couch think about this, you never know whose boardroom your soundtrack will be being played in.

If this was a small company doing this we’d have TV Shows like ACA chasing the Managing Director through the car park, but because they are a multinational giant they seem to escape scrutiny and any sort of punishment is laughable and if a fine is handed down it is usually no bigger than the CEO’s expense account for the week.

Perhaps when fines to companies are handed down the amount should be not fixed amounts but be based on a percentage of turnover. Currently there is no penalty of any real consequence for large companies when fines that would almost break a small firm are a drop in the ocean for big firms. It is not just companies like Samsung either, we are forever seeing big mining and energy firms abusing the pathetic nature of our penalty system.

I would not suggest anyone hold their breath waiting for that to happen however, so as per usual it will be up to the consumer to provide the deterrent to companies like Samsung using their purchasing power. Unfortunately though for companies like Samsung who spend so much on media advertising, don’t expect a lot of media exposure on their deceptive practices.

Once again, where would we be without social media?

 

 

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