Aaaah, the Samsung life.
So, like a demented weirdo, I have both an iPhone 16 Pro Max and a Samsung S24 Ultra.
I’ve come and gone from iOS and Android many times in the past 20 years, and I can tell you they both suck in their own ways, but Apple is undeniably the champ of at least one thing: Customer service, especially in aftersales.
If there’s one thing I know from very personal experience, over multiple occasions, it is much easier (if never perfect) to get an issue resolved with Apple than it is with Samsung.
My favourite example is when I had the first-generation Galaxy Buds Pro. They started failing after a few months, so I took them back to the Telstra store I got them from, and their only option was to direct me to a Samsung repair and evaluation office about 30 kilometres away.
That’s fine, except that when I phoned that office, they told me they’d simply be mailing the buds to Sydney to be tested.
A year later, my AirPods Pro started failing. I took them to my nearest Apple store, 5km away. (That same shopping centre, a major retail destination in Melbourne, has only a tiny Samsung kiosk.)
Apple tested my AirPods Pro there in store, confirmed the fault, and handed over a brand-new pair on the spot.
Good times.
My latest Samsung trouble
I now live in Berlin, having moved here from Australia earlier this year.
Right now I’m in my Samsung account trying to change my region to Germany, and I’ve done all the verification, and now it’s just sitting there spinning its little loader animation for the past 10 minutes.
This is also the second time I’ve tried; the same thing happened last night. When I refreshed the browser (foolishly?), I had to delete my new phone number from my account and request a new verification code – but then it blocked me, saying I’d requested too many verification codes. I get it, security, but at least be consistent in your own directions.
Clearly I’ll have to head down to the Samsung Berlin store later today, which annoyingly is much further away than the Apple store, haha. (Changing the region of my Apple ID was, sadly, much easier than this.)
The moral of the story is… if customer service matters to you, especially after you’ve purchased a product, then you’d be forgiven for sticking with Apple.
I generally prefer Android as an OS, but no Android brand can match Apple for customer service.
Not all of them can afford it, of course, but Samsung? Samsung definitely can.
It just doesn’t bother.
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