Praise for a Big Company?

I bash the "Big Boys" so often that I felt it was time I shared a story of the "Big Boy" taking my side over the "Small Player."

My Samsung TV is dying. It turns itself off and on at least 3 times when I try to turn it on and takes an average of 2 minutes to show a picture. To give you an idea, my computer turns on and loads Firefox faster than my TV shows a picture. The worst part is that it is a little over 3 years old. My old TV lasted 15 years and I treated it like crap. I dust my Samsung daily.

So anyway, I went to the forums in search of others with my same problem and I found thousands of us: basically everyone who bought my TV around the same time I did. The forums warned of a fight with Samsung to get them to fix it, but they would if you fought hard and long. I prepared myself for a fight and called Samsung.

Samsung, it turned out, was not prepared for a fight and was, instead very helpful. They asked for my TV's serial number and then confirmed it was part of a series that were made with a Power Supply defect that they would fix at no charge. Even better, I did not have to ship my TV to them; they would pay to send someone to me. I was happy and awaiting my call from the local Samsung repair center.

Today, Monday, I got a call from Lakes Electronics, the local Samsung repair outlet, and they informed me that they would not be repairing my TV. They said they were behind in the payments from Samsung and refused to honor any new contracts until they were paid by Samsung. I was shocked; mainly because this was none of my business. I called Samsung immediately, once again prepared for a fight, and once again Samsung disarmed me.

Samsung was shocked that Lakes Electronics would refuse service AND that they would give the excuse that they did. Not that it was or was not true, but that it was none of my business as a customer of both parties.

I asked the Customer Service person what my options were as it was out of Best Buy's warranty and nobody was willing to repair it. She checked and saw that Lakes Electronics were the only option for me. I sighed. They placed me on hold and then returned with the news of "we will repair your TV with our repair people or we will replace it for you, but you will not be charged and we are so sorry this has happened."

How can I be mad? I may have just become a Samsung customer for life.