After all the incentives, Samsung has decided to resort to some harsh measures to ensure the replacement of defective Galaxy Note 7 with the existing customers who are still procrastinating with surrendering their devices.
According to a notice posted on Samsung New Zealand’s website, with effect to November 18, none of the Note 7 phones will connect to cellular network. After all its schemes and incentives, Samsung now appears to be ready to use the stick.
This will disable the devices from making calls, using data or sending SMS. The notice said, in order to give the customers proper time to return their defective device for replacement, the company will be contacting customers from now until November 18 with information on the service disconnection.
In the U.S., we’re considering many options to ensure that all remaining Note7 devices in customers’ hands get returned as smoothly as possible.
This move by the company to block access to cellular networks is to compel those customers, who are all too unafraid of their devices blowing up.
An extreme step like this was the need of the hour considering that many New Zealand customers seemed unable to comprehend the risk involved in keeping a device their pockets that could catch fire anytime.
The devices won’t be totally useless, as will be able to connect to Wi-Fi networks, and will work as cameras and music players — however, the move may prompt many stragglers to finally turn in their devices, as who would want a smart phone which cannot make calls and does not serve the main purpose of a phone at first place.
Earlier in the year, 35 cases were reported where Samsung’s device Galaxy Note 7 caught fire. Things got even murkier when even the replaced devices were reported as having the same problem.
Though the device was an awesome piece of technology, it is just not worth owning something this dangerous — particularly when that something is a phone! Meanwhile, the strategy appears to be limited to New Zealand for now, however, we can expect the company to emulate it elsewhere as well — it if succeeds in getting the most die-hard fans of the Note 7, to return their devices.
