Samsung's 990 Pro SSD warranty policy is a scam; I'm taking them to court.

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, how's it going? Hope you're having a lovely day. Welcome to today's episode of How I'm getting I'm your host, Louis Rossman.

[00:00:04]But I'm going to do something about it.

[00:00:05]I'm going to sue Samsung. I had a Samsung 990 Pro 4 TBTE drive that died.

[00:00:10]This drive was used with a heat sink.

[00:00:12]This drive was used with not one but two 80 millimeter fans above it that are 3000 RPM that are loud as hell, making sure that this drive stays cool all the time. I have two of them. They're in RAID runway. Now, because they're in a RAID one array, if I use one without the other, it'll work. But if that other drive dies, I'm screwed. The way that I knew that I was going to have a horrible experience is when I went to try and buy another one. So, this is a drive that I bought for 300 plus tax. You can probably see where I'm going with this back a year ago. And then I look online and to buy that same $300, $320 drive is now $950 thanks to the AI bubble that we have going on right now.

[00:00:48]I knew at that moment that even though I bought this drive less than two years ago, even though I'm still in warranty, even though this is the Pro version, not the EVO version, something just told me that I'm not getting a replacement from Samsung. So, let's go over how this went and I'm going to share everything with you. So, I sent in my inquiry and I got this back. This was actually promising.

[00:01:06]Thank you for choosing Samsung. We have received your inquiry. A team member will address your request as soon as possible. Good morning, Louis. Thank you for reaching out to Samsung support. I want to first commend you in the incredibly precise and technical details provided. Your diagnosis is absolutely correct. When a drive remains enumerated by the operating system but completely fails to respond to NVME amid commands or pass telemetry to smart ctl, it indicates a fatal controller or firmware level lockup. The drive is permanently failed and requires a warranty replacement. However, I must inform you that you've reached the Samsung Canada businessto business support desk. The receipt provided indicates this is a 990 Pro that was purchased at Best Buy in South Austin, Texas. Samsung warranties are strictly regional and our Canadian service systems do not have jurisdiction with issuas. They told me how to do it.

[00:01:44]I have no idea how this happened from me emailing this. I I was honestly just kind of flailing trying to find out what email address I'm supposed to use to file an RMA on a Samsung drive. They don't make it very obvious in the site, but whatever. They told me where to email and I sent an email to that place and they said, "Thank you for contacting Samsung Memory Support." They asked me for my phone number, drive, model, serial number, reason for repair, what I did to troubleshoot it, and so on and so forth. And I had responded to them with all this information around 10 minutes later. So, they asked me this 12:25 p.m.

[00:02:15]on May 22nd, and I responded to them on 12:34 on May 22nd. I provided every piece of information. The only thing I did not provide was the picture of the drive because the drive was still in the machine at the time, and I didn't have the time to be able to take it out yet so that I could take pictures of it and everything else. Now, they had asked me if I can provide a picture of the unit later in the day. And again, I had said, "I am going to give you a picture when I get home from work." And the next day they said that they have closed my ticket because it's been over 24 hours without a response. Now keep this is a very small detail here, but it just demonstrates how thirsty they are to actually close the tickets before even a day has gone by. I had sent them my message at 12:34 p.m. And then the next day at 12:02 p.m., not 24 hours, they have already automatically closed the ticket, hoping that I forgotten about it before I even sent the picture. Anyway, I send them the picture, the receipts, and everything else. I get the ticket reopens and after that they say they received my comments. They are going to send me a notice on how to return the drive. My service request has been processed. They sent me a label to send them back to the device. They then tell me that they received the device. After receiving the device, I eventually get this. This is a repair statement that says that they have worked on the drive.

[00:03:24]The job summary says test pass. And when I scroll down, it says that they've informed me that the drive was verified as good. So, they said that my drive worked. They're not replacing my drive.

[00:03:35]Now, I emailed them within minutes of getting this. They emailed me 2:24 p.m.

[00:03:39]on June 3rd. I emailed back 2:27 on June 3rd. I responded to them within 3 minutes saying the following. When you say the return drive was verified as good, are you saying that you are sending me the one that is verified as good or that you are sending me the dead drive I sent you back to me as is? I sent you detailed error logs of it not working and it consistently dropping out of raid arrays. That drive was not good.

[00:03:59]I did not get anything back from them. I did not hear back. I never got a response to that email. I got a tracking number sending the drive back to me, which I find to be somewhat passive aggressive. So, I've sent you a drive that's dead. You're telling me that the drive I sent you is dead is working. And when I tell you, hey, what the Are you just sending me back the same drive that I sent you that's dead, saying that it's good? Instead of responding with something, they send me back a tracking number. Two days later, I get to drive back and this is how it works.

[00:04:24]>> Oh, wa.

[00:04:24]>> Did you see >> 44 megabytes per second right speed? I saw that spike.

[00:04:28]>> We hit the spike red spot. Yeah, >> this is right speed. Now, before we get to read speed, 158 megab Oh, 55 megabytes a second. Samsung said this drive is fine.

[00:04:40]You scam artists.

[00:04:45]>> Maybe I'm just being too picky.

[00:04:48]>> I should be okay with my SSD that writes slower than a MacBook hard drive from 2012.

[00:04:54]>> Oh my god. 68 megabytes a second.

[00:04:58]>> This drive is barely even warm to the touch.

[00:05:02]20. That just went down to 20.

[00:05:06]>> So, uh, for data recoveries from those drives, I have special tool. Let me show it to you.

[00:05:12]>> I used that yesterday, by the way. This is my freezer. I have this freeze it.

[00:05:18]>> This is a freezer.

[00:05:20]>> It's like a giant. This looks like a dual Zeon CPU heat sink.

[00:05:24]>> Exactly.

[00:05:24]>> What What do the spikes mean? It means uh the speed the writing speed the drops.

[00:05:31]>> Oh yeah. 68 megabytes a second. I saw that.

[00:05:33]>> Now for those of you who are wondering, oh maybe your computer you plug it into isn't working. That is a PC3000 Express portable edition. That thing costs like 10 or $20,000. We use this to recover hundreds of drives on a regular basis. We have a data recovery lab. That is what we do. This is all we do day in day out. Recover data from dead hard drives, dead SSDs, micro SD cards that have been cracked into pieces. This is our profession. This is the business that I run. This is what I do. How stupid do you think I am? Like, oh, there must be some confusion. This drive is working. The person that I sit next to at work takes SD cards and scrapes the individual traces off and puts them into a spider assembly when the police need the data recovered off of it for a case. You think I'm not going to notice that you sent me back a drive? It's insulting.

[00:06:18]I take it home and the thing completely dies. It doesn't even want to stay in a radar anymore. So, I send them back this message. You sent me a tracking number before you answered my question. You shipped the drive back, told me it was fine, and you were done.

[00:06:28]But it is not fine. I plugged it back in, and it writes at 40 to 60 megabytes per second, and then it dies. This is a 4 TBTE 990 Pro. A working one does not do that. It fell out of my radar rays for a month before I sent it to you, which is why I sent it to you with the logs of what's going on. Whatever test you ran, it did not catch a fault that takes about 90 seconds to reproduce in a desk. So, we're clear on the facts. I bought this drive new from Best Buy, a genuine retail vendor, for roughly $330.

[00:06:49]It failed with an under 18 months inside its warranty period. I returned it under warranty. You declared a good and shipped it back without explaining how you reached that conclusion. The same model now retails for roughly $950. I am aware of what that does to your incentive to honor this warranty. I expect you are aware of it, too. I am not interested in a second round of the same answer. I want a new or equivalent working 4 TB 9990 Pro replacement within 60 days of the date of this letter. If I do not get one of those, I will file suit in the Justice Court of Travis County, Texas, where I live, and I will document the entire process publicly.

[00:07:16]This is your statutory notice, so there is no confusion later about whether you got one. The implied warrant of merchantability, Texas and business commerce code section 2.314. A 4 terbte SSD that drops out of arrays and collapses to 40 to 60 megabytes in under 18 months is not fit for the ordinary purposes for which such goods are used.

[00:07:32]It was not merchant. Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Consumer Protection Act, Texas Business and Commerce Code section 17.41. This is a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo which I will use in my lawsuit.

[00:07:42]What I said at the bottom, I run a repair shop. People come back to us three months, six months, sometimes a year past warranty and we still help them because that is what it means to stand behind what you sell. You are a multinational with a balance sheet larger than some countries. The drive is in warranty and you sent it back broken with a tracking number instead of an answer. I will spend more time and money getting this resolved than the drive is worth. That is the point. If you did this to me on a $330 part because the replacement now cost you $950, you are likely doing it to other people who do not have the time to paper trail or the willingness to stand in a courtroom over it. I do. You have 60 days. Their response, which is some gaslighting Hello, Lewis. We apologize for the inconvenience and confusion you may have experienced so far. What the you mean confusion? I plug that into a PC3000 that we use for data recovery every single day and it gets 40 to 60 megabytes a second. Is that normal? Am I confused that one of the best data recovery computers that you could plug any SSD to on Earth is telling me that I'm getting 40 to 60 megabytes a second on a device that then dies. I'm not confused. The SSD we sent out to you was last week on June 3rd, 2026. We made an outbound call around 100 p p.m. Eastern Standard Time to provide updates and review the results of your repair ticket.

[00:08:47]We did not receive a reply or call back.

[00:08:49]I responded to you within three minutes of you sending me that email. Due to this, the SSD was sent automatically back to you. Based on the testing done at the service center, the SSD passed all normal testing.

[00:09:00]That thing gets 40 to 60 megabytes in a PC300. We were able to reset the controller and reflash the firmware on the product. We were also able to complete our stress test which would typically replicate normal read and write operations for a standard consumer environment. Standard consumer environment of what? A 2 and a half inch ID drive from 1994 to 60 megabytes a second on something that can't even stay in a RAID one array. You now if you've tested the SSD after our reset and reflash process and issues continue, we can reopen your warranty ticket as the product is still in warranty. However, as you may be aware at this time, there is a very big shortage of memory products across the market. Due to this issue, the warranty service center does not currently have your model of SSD in stock for replacement or a comparable model for an upgrade. This means that if the SSD is sent back for follow-up service, a refund will be started acknowledging what is above.

[00:09:45]You don't have it in stock, huh? You don't have this online on Amazon right now on the Samsung store for $949 dollars. Damn near triple what I paid for it when I purchased it.

[00:09:55]You know exactly what the you're doing. Now, please, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor. As a fellow autist myself, as somebody who could literally see the score that I get on the test, don't give me the um actually they're two separate warehouses. I know they have separate warehouses. Fulfillment by Amazon and fulfillment to this company in a warranty center. That's not the point. The point is that somebody at the company, whether it's the board or the CEO or the marketing person, whoever deals with all these AI data centers, has to choose their allotment.

[00:10:22]We are going to put zero of these drives for warranty for pre-existing customers and all of them into the Sam Altman Dario data center pile. People that want to pay the new price. That is a decision that humans have to make. Hey boss, it looks like we have no SSDs left for warranty customers. Yeah, but Sam Alman and everybody else wants to pay more for them, so we're going to sell to them.

[00:10:43]That seems pretty wrong. Yeah, you're right. Okay, here you go. Give this SSD to the person that needs it under warranty. That's what you do if you're a moral company. I don't give two shits of a how many different warehouses you have. I don't care what your internal logistics are. That's not my concern. That's not my business. I'm a customer that purchased a product from you and you have a warranty. It doesn't seem like you want to fulfill that warranty. And your internal logistics and your CEO and your board that want to make more money selling this to AI data centers is a you problem, not a me. Now, if they had simply said, "Listen, man. Times are tough. I'm sorry. You're just not going to be able to get a refund." That's one thing. Telling me you don't have the drive in stock when it's right there. Visit the Samsung store. How many of these could I buy right now? I could buy one. I could buy two. If I log into a business account, how many of these can I buy? Four.

[00:11:29]Five.

[00:11:32]10.

[00:11:34]You don't have any in stock. It's funny.

[00:11:36]You have them in stock for $949, Now, I get it. You want to sell them to Sam Alman. You want to make $949 selling it to Sam Alman instead of making $300 to $300 selling it to me.

[00:11:46]Here's the problem. you. you decided to sell it to me for $330, which means that you don't have to warranty it. I don't get to tell people, "Hey, I'm sorry that you bought this thing for me, but there's other people that want it more than you that have more money, so I'm not going to help you when you need warranty." you. We don't have them in stock. The you don't you have them in stock when somebody wants to pay $940 for it. I could buy 20 of these right now on Amazon. And this is the thing that pisses me off about this.

[00:12:10]It's not that you don't have them, it's you don't have them for me. You have them for Sam Alman. You have them for Daario. You have them for every other AI but you don't have them for the actual consumers that built your company. You have them in stock.

[00:12:23]You just don't have them in stock when you actually owe a warranty obligation.

[00:12:27]There are people that come back to my store. We have a 3 month to 12 month warranty on repairs. There are people that show up sometimes two, three years in with a blown backlight fuse. It's like, fine, it. Here you go. Even when it's a screen, there are times that we have replaced the screen that at the time cost us $130 that will then cost us $350 or $400 a year and a half later.

[00:12:45]The customer is not even in warranty anymore. I'm like, "Yeah, fine. it.

[00:12:48]I'll just give you another one."

[00:12:50]And here's the thing that pisses me off about this. They're the source of this.

[00:12:53]When they say there's a shortage of this, this is not like Corsair is reselling RAM that's made by Samsung or He is the source. They make the nans. They make the chips that go on this. The shortage that is occurring right now is because Samsung is making an active choice that they want to sell more of this to data centers than they do to normal customers. Here's the one problem. I am required, at least to my knowledge, to wait 60 days after giving you notice to file a suit. I will be filing a suit 60 days from today. This is not about whether I win or lose. This is not about whether I get a new SSD.

[00:13:24]This is about ensuring that doing the wrong thing costs more than doing the right thing. If Samsung has to pay a lawyer to respond to the suit, lawyers can cost anywhere from $400 to $1,200 an hour. And on average, the type of lawyer that Samsung is going to respond to meet me in court is probably going to be on the higher ends of that range. If Samsung has to pay an attorney to show up in court, Samsung is going to pay way more money than they would they would have lost if they had given me this drive. And that's the point here. If I had done the wrong thing, I would have been rewarded. And that's what's wrong with this entire system. The way that you create villains is by rewarding people for doing the wrong thing and for punishing them for doing the right thing. The right thing to do was to go through your RMA process and fill everything out and deal with the ticket that automatically closes in less than 24 hours before I even send you the picture of the drive. The right thing to do is to jump through all your hoops and The wrong thing to do would have been to buy another drive from a vendor of yours, return my drive in the box, file a chargeback, and then within one business day have gotten a new drive and not had to deal with any of this That's the wrong thing to do, right? But the wrong thing would have gotten me a working drive immediately. My RAID one array would have been back up immediately. I wouldn't be here doing a video. I wouldn't be here looking up laws. I wouldn't be here going to small claims court. When I did the right thing, you decided to me. And that is not something that can be abided. I will not abide that. You need to pay more money for doing the wrong thing than you would have done for doing the right thing. Doing the right thing would have been replacing my SSD under warranty the same way that I would for any of my customers, regardless of the market conditions. If I'm still selling something and somebody got that product and it didn't work, I replace the product. I don't say, "Well, market conditions mean I could sell this for more to somebody else." That's bitchshit. And I don't do that as a company with $45,000 in the bank. You sure as don't get to do it with a company with hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank. I think it's fair to have higher expectations of a company whose market cap is higher than the GDP of many countries than it is from a hole-in-the-wall repair shop.

[00:15:21]I'm going to make sure that you spend more money as a result of doing the wrong thing than what you would have paid if you did the right thing. We need to ensure that the incentive structures are aligned properly. If you had sent me a replacement drive instead of try to gaslight me and claim that you don't have them in stock when they're right there in the first result on Google, I would not be suing you. I'm suing you because you bullshitted me.

[00:15:41]It's very important that companies understand that when you do the right thing, it will be cheaper for them than when they do the wrong thing. And even if I lose, it's not about whether I win or lose. It's about whether Samsung winds up paying more than $900 to deal with this in court than they would have simply replacing my SSD.

[00:15:59]I look forward to seeing you in court.

[00:16:01]Unfortunately, I have to wait 60 days. I wish it could be tomorrow.

[00:16:07]I look forward to costing you more money in legal fees than what you would have paid to simply replace my drive. And I hope everybody that has this problem does that. Honestly, I truly I really hope they do. I I hope they don't accept this line that, oh, we just don't have them in stock anymore for you. I think normal people are just starting to get sick of that.

[00:16:22]seeing these companies that got built on normal consumers decide that we're not going to sell to consumers anymore so that we can so that we can sell into an AI bubble. that. Sam Alman didn't build your company. Dario didn't build your company. Consumers built your company and now you're them. In response to that, I'll see you in court.

[00:16:38]That's it for today and as always I hope you learned