r/technology • u/habichuelacondulce • 7h ago
Hardware Louis Rossmann is suing Samsung after firm offers $330 refund for defective SSD while selling the drives on Amazon for $949 — spat over 4TB 990 Pro SSD is headed to court
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/louis-rossman-threatens-to-take-samsung-to-court-over-dead-4tb-990-pro-ssd-after-ssd-maker-failed-to-replace-the-drive-under-warranty1.5k
u/tomz17 7h ago
Seems fairly open and shut with the wording in the warranty about the present market value.
They (temporarily) screwed themselves under the presumption that the market price for hardware decreases with time!
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u/Fthebo 7h ago
yeah but the warranty also says "in no event will Samsung's liability exceed the amount paid by you for the product. these limitations and exclusions apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law."
So it's just going to be messy lawyer fighting over which specific wording takes priority
Bad PR for them when they could just replace the drive with a refurb as per what the policy also states
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u/tomz17 7h ago
So it's just going to be messy lawyer fighting over which specific wording takes priority
IANAL, but my understanding was that in such cases it defaults to benefit the party that DID NOT write the ambiguous contract.
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u/Vilnius_Nastavnik 7h ago
IALA (litigator not transactional) and biglaw contract attorneys are playing at NBA levels of pedantry and barely plausible arguments. It could honestly go either way, the only thing guaranteed is that everyone is gonna run up a staggering legal bill.
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u/3_50 6h ago
You are lawyer a?
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u/militant_rainbow 6h ago
IALA = I am a lawyer who does anal.
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u/Exldk 6h ago
IANAL will never stop being a funny acronym, especially if you use it with people who have never used reddit.
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u/gmc98765 5h ago
That acronym is much older than reddit. It was in common usage on usenet by the late 1980s.
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u/RepresentativeRun71 6h ago
Rossman is filing in small claims court. He probably won’t be hiring a lawyer, and Samsung will probably look at the cost of a single billable hour for a local attorney In Austin and realize cutting a check or sending a new drive is the cost effective solution here.
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u/Agoras_song 6h ago
Dumb question - what prevents a large company like this from ignoring the small claims court entirely.
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u/QueerBallOfFluff 6h ago
Usually ignoring small claims means a default ruling in favour of the person who made the claim
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u/jnads 5h ago
And then a writ of execution and seizing assets.
Which means going into a Samsung retail store and seizing phones to be auctioned off until it covers the amount. Or seizing SSDs if they have them.
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u/souryellowfruit 6h ago
It's generally a very bad idea to ignore a judgement in a jurisdiction in which you do business.
Here is an example of a couple getting a judgement against Bank of America, which the bank ignored.
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u/Knight--Of--Ren 4h ago
There’s a clip of bailiffs in the UK showing up to an airport with a high court writ, shutting down check in for a specific airline and explaining they will have no choice but to impound the aircraft to cover the few hundred pounds owed to a passenger who successfully sued if the debt isn’t paid.
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u/souryellowfruit 2h ago
Here is a fun clip of UK court enforcers threatening to seize assets at the corporate Lotus F1 offices over unpaid debts.
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u/Agoras_song 6h ago
Fuck yes, thank you for restoring my faith that the normal person has a chance.
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u/Natural-Tree-5107 5h ago
Watch the $200,000 Lego theft videos and that faith will disappear very quickly.
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u/StanknBeans 4h ago
That's ongoing, you'd be foolish to base your faith on something that you don't know the result of.
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u/mike_b_nimble 6h ago
Most likely failure to appear results in summary judgement against them and then they have a court-ordered penalty to pay.
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u/yukeake 6h ago
From a layman's perspective, it looks like they'd risk a default judgement against them for not showing up. If they think they'd lose the case anyway, it might actually save them money to take the default ruling against them, ship Rossmann a new drive, and wipe their hands of the matter. Lawyers ain't cheap.
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u/ignacekarnemelk 5h ago
They'd also have to pay court costs. It would be cheaper to just ship him a new drive before he files.
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u/Barbie_and_KenM 6h ago
Then you'll get a default judgment if the other party fails to appear after being served. Simplifying the many steps to get there, eventually you can have the court place a hold on a Samsung bank account or the sheriff seize assets if they have any in Texas.
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u/James20k 6h ago
They'll get a default judgement against them, and eventually the court will enforce being able to seize stuff if they really refuse to pay up. Its happened before
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u/forty_three 5h ago
Louis makes it pretty clear in his video that he's going on the attack, not looking for a quick solution for himself.
This is not about whether i win or lose. This is not about whether i get another SSD. This is about ensuring that doing the wrong thing costs more than doing the right thing. ... The wrong thing to do would've been to buy another drive from a vendor of yours, return my drive in the box, file a chargeback, and within one business day, I would've had a new drive and not having to deal with any of this bullshit. ... When I did the right thing, you decided to fuck me. ... You need to pay more money for doing the wrong thing than you would have done for doing the right thing. ... I am going to make sure that you spend more money as a result of doing the wrong thing, than you would have paid by doing the right thing.
So he's pretty intentional about making this cost them as much as legally feasible. (Of course, part of that is just the publicity of getting to shame them at scale)
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u/detrebear 6h ago
From what I understood from Louis video, that guarantee is why he wants to sue to begin with, so let's hope Samsung doesn't chicken out now.
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u/Obscure_Octopuss 6h ago edited 6h ago
You are thinking of a construction clause, and that applies when, like you said, something is ambiguous in a contract. However, I'm not sure how that would apply to their warranty policy when it is clearly stated and not ambiguous.
The "Except for the express warranties stated herein" language supersedes other clauses in the warranty T&C'a. That is why contracts have hierarchies of precedence. If there is conflicting language, certain sections take precedence over others.
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u/angbad 6h ago
This is completely wrong from a general perspective.
And the language described here is not ambiguous. That type of clause is ubiquitous.
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u/lobehold 6h ago
But it's not ambiguous?
It goes by market value capped by original purchase price.
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u/Bakoro 6h ago
yeah but the warranty also says "in no event will Samsung's liability exceed the amount paid by you for the product. these limitations and exclusions apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law."
I could see that as not refunding more currency than was paid.
They should always be liable for replacements.The value of one SSD of some specifications is the value of one SSD of those specifications, regardless of what the fluctuating value over time is, in terms of currency.
That is the most fair decision on behalf of all parties, and something where it becomes very difficult for one party to screw over the other.
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u/jmlinden7 6h ago
Objective values change over time regardless of currency inflation/deflation.
They should be liable for a 1-to-1 replacement but they don't want to spend more than the original price.
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u/PreposterisG 3h ago
It is funny how the law always seems to give the benefit either way to the corporation instead of the individual.
Price has gone down? Well here is a replacement.
Price has gone up? Well here is the money you paid back.
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u/lepapulematoleguau 6h ago
That's what he said he wants. In the video clearly states he does not care about the outcome. He only wants the process for Samsung to be more expensive than to do the right thing.
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u/StaticSystemShock 6h ago
How does refurb work with SSD which wears with use? Or they just reset the use/wear data in firmware and act like it was never used?
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u/Fthebo 6h ago
"In the case of replacements, Samsung may replace Your Product with one that was previously used, repaired and tested to meet Samsung specifications"
means whatever they want it to basically lol
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u/loogie97 6h ago
Where I worked, the warranty for a defective product is capped at original retail and paid in a gift card.
So a $199 microwave with a $20 extended warranty will pay out $199 in gift cards if the item is irreparable. Even if the current price is $229.
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u/zeptillian 6h ago
Their warranty said it would be replaced unless a replacement was unavailable.
They are claiming there are none available while directly selling them online themselves.
This means they are violating the terms of their warranty.
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u/Orleanian 4h ago
Are they playing some sort of technicality fuckery where the available drives are not the exact same make/model/config?
"Yes, we have 4TB 990 Pro SDs as MZ-V9P4T0B/AM, but you ordered 4TB 990 Pro SDs as MZ-VAP4T0B/AM; Completely different parts, you plebe."
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u/Warcraft_Fan 4h ago
They also said the SSD tested "fine" and sent it back to owner when it was still not working.
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u/loogie97 6h ago edited 35m ago
It was a safe bet when they wrote that warranty the value of ram and ssd’s would go down over time. They are bathing in AI money right now, just pay the freaking warranty.
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u/Caleth 5h ago
But have your considered the implication?
Next you'll be saying there should be fair pricing as well as fair treatment.
THen where will next quarter's bonus for my 5th yacht come from?
Why won't you think of the yachts? Who's the real monster here!?!?!?!
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u/RingOfSol 4h ago
He's not asking them to send $900, he's asking for a replacement, which they have in stock.
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u/MotanulScotishFold 3h ago
I mean, why always the risk to be on customer and never on companies?
You sell a product and that product is defective but become expensive? You support the cost at your own risk. You should've made better quality stuff instead.
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u/pSphere1 6h ago
Crucial replaced 2 sticks of laptop DDR2 with new ones. It was obsolete for years and no longer sold. I didn't even give them proof of purchase.
They were like, "bad... really?.. well here's some new ones"
Still working today.
Too bad they left the consumer game.
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u/THEwed123wet 5h ago
Yeah I replaced an MX500 that failed and I had an awesome customer experience with them. It's indeed a shame.
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u/Mimical 4h ago
We had built a rack with their RAM to run a bunch of simulation work in university and one stick was giving us a hassle.
We reached out over email and they had a new set out within a few days. Then emailed us back a week later to check in and sent grant resources and application information for any additional items we might need. The CS team really crushed it looking back.
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u/123_alex 5h ago
They wanted to get rid of old inventory or they realized that the few dollars they save by fucking you over costs 100x more in the long term.
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u/datnero_ 4h ago
I still use amazon like an asshole because they just don't ask questions and they accept every random return/replacement. I remember thinking circa 2017 that I would insta-cancel my amazon the minute they started pushing back on replacements or returns, and they just never did. if you're dumb and you buy from random listings, you can always have issues, but if you stick to reputable brands and avoid the obvious chinese re-sticker bullshit, it's almost always smooth
I'm officially letting my sub end in 2027 because I have become too annoyed about Bezos being a ghoul, but Amazon has made thousands from me because somebody over there is smart enough to know that easy returns means easy sales in 99% of cases and the convenience was too great for my lazy ass
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u/Freddy216b 4h ago
Costco learned that lesson too. The ease of returns there is staggering. I'd consider a loss leader just like their hotdogs. Process the handful of nonsense returns, feed them a cheap hotdog, and just keep the customer happy so they continue to drop hundreds there on a weekly basis.
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u/KeonXDS 4h ago
I'm still confused about crucial leaving the consumer market. Because just recently they just rebranded crucial with a newer font design and are still release new products under the crucial name.
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u/invyros 7h ago
Rossman then threatened to take the SSD manufacturer to court in Austin, Texas, if a new 4TB 990 Pro is not sent to him within 60 days. Samsung ultimately replied and offered him a cash refund of $330, the original price of the drive, citing a lack of stock to replace the drive. Rossman found the drive in plentiful supply on Samsung's own Amazon store for $949, meaning he would have to pay three times the amount for a replacement drive.
Louis doesn't understand, the chaebol desperately needs that extra $619.
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u/EmperorOfAllCats 7h ago
Who doesn't?
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u/adirtysocialist- 6h ago
It's tough in this economy. No one seems to care about the needs and feelings of these international mega corps anymore. Truly a shame.
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u/henchman171 5h ago
Samsung only owns 50% of South Korea. Can’t you see how disadvantaged they are?
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u/deoxysribonucleic 6h ago
There are only a few megas in the whole world, they need to be added to the endangered species list for maximum conservation. Kids these days.
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u/MattieShoes 6h ago
Now I'm trying to imagine a forced megacorp breeding program...
Mmm, maybe that's what Teddy's trustbusting was.
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u/cowinabadplace 4h ago
Those Samsung worker $400k bonuses aren't going to pay themselves.
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u/DinosBiggestFan 5h ago
Hot take I know, but I think when something is warrantied pricing factors shouldn't be taken into account. A full replacement should be offered first and foremost.
"But then they'll lose money!" yeah well they shouldn't be putting defective products on the market. "But defects can happen to anything and the rates are low!" yeah well if the rates are low, they can afford such a rare case.
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u/hepatitisC 4h ago
Key item is they don't lose money... they lose potential profit. They aren't taking a loss on the cost of the SSD. They're just pointing to a price they hyper inflated it to and saying "see...." as justification for not replacing their faulty product
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u/TophxSmash 2h ago
they wont comp you for a price decrease why should they get to on a price increase?
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u/Valeen 3h ago
When you determine what you should sell a product for you build in overhead such as that. You have your engineers create the bathtub curve, you then know what the failure rate looks like. This just isn't early life failure, or items arriving DOA to customers, you also have yield rate/infant mortality that has to be calculated. Infant mortality is a sunk cost that you will have to pay even before you bring customers into the picture. You build this into the cost of the unit so you can hit whatever profit margins you want for it. The bathtub curve also tells you how long of a warranty to offer- too long of a warranty and you replace everything, too short of a warranty and you will end up with droves of pissed off customers.
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u/AI_moderated_failure 1h ago
If they're not pricing in losses due to replacements for defective items then they are a terrible company and ought to have gone out of business year zero.
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u/PRSHZ 7h ago
In my opinion, the Takeaway here is that these big companies don’t really give a flying fuck about the customers until one with a lot of influence comes up and speaks up then everybody starts shaking in their boots
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u/ignacekarnemelk 5h ago
everybody starts shaking in their boots
Where did you read that? Not in the article.
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u/Vileartist 4h ago
I dont know about shaking in their boots.. its more like 'Oh darn, you got me! Well here is your settlement, now check out our product lineup!'
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u/Capable_Objective115 4h ago
They still don’t give a flying fuck when one with a lot of influence come up and speaks up. He has to sue them.
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u/theSchlauch 7h ago
It's not like they have to buy the chips and take a loss. Samsung literally produces the chips on the SSD themselves. They need to take the "loss" that they can't sell some 4TB to Big AI and honor the warranty.
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u/Upper_Decision_5959 6h ago edited 6h ago
It's Samsung and all the SSD drive makers fault because few years ago they limited production to keep prices high, but now they can't produce enough and some even got out of the consumer SSD to focus on enterprise SSDs. God I can't wait for the AI bubble to pop this is worse than 2020 chip shortage, because at least prices back then didn't rise to these stupid levels of pricing we have now.
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u/pugs2300 7h ago
I love this dude.
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u/hardtobeuniqueuser 7h ago
i can't understand how he can find enough hours in the day for all the stuff he does. dude is a machine.
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u/a-stack-of-masks 7h ago
I bet half of it is being fueled by pure hate. I dont watch him much but that video about the self dissembling battleborn batteries was hilarious.
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u/kylinblue 7h ago
Do you see how deep black his eye sockets are… dude got like no sleep
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u/Be_Human_ 2h ago
His eyes seemed to be like that naturally. I've been watching him for a while. That being said, he does have the tendency to over extend himself here and there. Dude works hard. I have a lot of respect for this guy.
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u/TheGaslighter9000X 5h ago
As someone who is motivated by hate and anger towards people/businesses that are being complete pieces of shit, we CREATE the time to work extra time to tell them “fuck you”.
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u/moaiii 6h ago
Oh, he has lot's of similarly hilarious videos like that. He did a fantastic take-down of Tom Evans Audio after they tried to duct-tape Mend It Mark not long ago, for example.
I don't think it's hate per se. I think he's like a pitbull terrior with a nose for corporate bullies, and just like a pitbull, gets really excited when he gets to sink his teeth in to someone who deserves it.
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u/grandoffline 6h ago
Dude is an ethical hater.
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u/SeriesXM 5h ago
I've seen him on reddit too, so there's a good chance he's here in this thread. He seems like a good dude who's just sick of all the bullshit. He's been right in every video I've seen and I hope he gets more and more popular.
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u/QdelBastardo 4h ago
best part to me is that he has been doing it for years. Early on fighting with Apple over repairing macs/ipads that were shit to start with. Planned obsolescence, inaccessible schematics, proprietary unreplaceable parts, screens that couldn't be changed without number matching in the firmware that was encrypted or some shit. Then taking on NYC real estate bullshit. Dude fights it all.
if the world operated the way we all know that it should, the way that Rossmann knows it should, we would all be much happier consumers.
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u/blueblip 6h ago
Because he is a smart man who set up an NGO and has people working with him to achieve these wins.
One person simply cannot do all this. This kind of advocacy takes a metric ton of research work, both technical and legal. On top of this, you need people who can specialize in dealing with the media to ensure word gets around. Not all public relations and marketing is about making corporations look good. So much of it is done so cases like these make it to the right media journalists in the right media houses.
Similarly, there will be people who are essentially lobbyists pushing forward their ideas to the right politicians. They will also need people who are aces at raising money to afford to pay for all this litigation (litigation can involve tons of things like court filing fees etc), pay the salaries of the smart people working with him, and so on and so forth.
Success is never built by one's lonesome, and definitely not by overworking yourself to the bone, accumulating tons of stress, and trying to do complex things that are nowhere in your wheelhouse.
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u/runswiftrun 4h ago
I genuinely can't explain why, but I don't like him. As, if I knew/met him in person at school at any point we would absolutely not be friends. Every video I see he comes across as super stuck up/elitist because he is smart and he knows it.
But, I 100% respect and love everything he does, and wish him the absolute best of success. I don't think there's another person that comes close to being an advocate for consumers as he does.
Just rubs me the wrong way; I have no proof or anything that points to him being an ass, its probably just my personality.
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u/Silly_Rub_6304 3h ago
I find his videos really difficult to get through, but I never disagree with his content.
He strikes me as someone who has a lot of conviction, a lot of energy, and is probably a bit on the spectrum (which I identify with myself).
His rant energy is off the charts.
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u/lmaotank 4h ago
you can dislike a guy but still respect the person/work. i'm in the same boat as you. tech jesus aka steve aka gamersnexus gives me the same vibes as rossman. like i'm already a very hatred driven guy, i can't just be in the same echoy hatred filled zone by watching them.
again, really respect their stuff, it's s tier in terms of quality of their work and passion, but their style is not for me.
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u/pilibitti 3h ago
yeah I think his online persona is insufferable. like this is his schtick but he is always miserable and wronged and angry. and he is right to be those things! but I don't want to be around that kind of energy lol.
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u/redditisnotus 6h ago
I love that he amassed a ton of money fighting this shit, and instead of fucking off into the sunset he's melting down his riches to upgrade these fights into full blown legal battles. He's a real one.
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u/PotentialLawyer123 7h ago
From the article:
"The wording of Samsung's warranty seems to support this conclusion:
"{...}during the limited warranty period, and subject to the conditions and exceptions stated in this Agreement, Samsung will, at its option, either: (1) repair or replace the Product with new or refurbished Product of equal or greater capacity and functionality; or (2) refund the then current market value of the Product at the time the warranty claim is made to Samsung if Samsung is unable to repair or replace the Product.""
Seems to me that Rossmann has some pretty firm ground to stand on. He wins either way you dice Samsung's warranty language. Either the court 1) orders a replacement due the "if Samsung is unable to repair or replace the product," as there is stock publicly available; or 2) orders Samsung to "refund the then current market value of the product at the time the warranty claim is made," which would be the $900+ valuation of today, not what Rossman paid when he purchased the drive.
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u/JoshFink 6h ago
You forgot the part that says, "in no event will Samsung's liability exceed the amount paid by you for the product. these limitations and exclusions apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law."
If you only pull out the sections that support him then it’s cut and dry. In its entirety though , not as much.
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u/PotentialLawyer123 6h ago
Oh my bad!! I do not remember seeing that language in the article?
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u/JoshFink 6h ago
That’s fair. There is so much in these agreements that they are all over the place and confusing.
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u/HumansNeedNotApply1 6h ago edited 6h ago
these limitations and exclusions apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law."
This is the actual key part. The law in Texas (i think he moved there?) doesn't allow this limitation. The other thing, they clearly have the SSD to send to him based on the offer on Amazon.
From what i was able to understand Texas courts don't tend to like when business buries these clauses and use generic terms like these. Either way, this is a dumb as hell lawsuit and they should quickly settle.
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u/SpicyElixer 6h ago
Where did you read that Texas does not allow this limitation?
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u/Carvj94 5h ago
Yeah I'm kind of calling bullshit here. Texas of all states has a pro consumer law where businesses are required to pay more than Market rates for replacement? Ignoring that Samsung has the stock for a direct replacement, there's no way the conservative oligarchy that is Texas wrote a law to that effect.
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u/HumansNeedNotApply1 5h ago
I mean, that's what i've read on a quick google that courts in Texas don't tend to like this generic, small letter liability limitations in warranties and judge against them. I was surprised too tbh.
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u/WorkWoonatic 4h ago
Then that's going to be an argument over whether the terms of the contract are enforceable, the terms themselves are quite clear.
RossMann would prefer to win, but he's happy either way. Costing Samsung money is most of his point
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u/dfddfsaadaafdssa 5h ago
This is true. Abbott cites ambiguous language as his reason for vetoing about half of the bills he rejects.
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u/zeptillian 6h ago
Samsung did not spend more to manufacture the drives they are still selling than what they paid to manufacture his defective one. They merely raised the prices on existing inventory.
Since their cost to honor the warranty did not go up they have to replace it under thei terms they set forth.
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u/UnexpectedAnanas 6h ago
Yep. They're not even arguing that they would lose money with the replacement due to a higher cost to manufacture. They're just arguing that they can't collect a higher profit margin off some other sucker for the drive they don't sell.
That's some bullshit.
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u/WesleyBiets 6h ago
I have almost the exact same problem but with Western Digital Gold 16TB Drive. Sold in October last year, errors after 2 weeks. Send it back. Didn't want to believe it was a faulty drive, took them 3 months to analyse. Than they stated sorry we have no more stock for the coming years and we don't produce these anymore, we can refund you the money, but if I want to buy a new one, costs me 50% more.
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u/NakedCardboard 5h ago
He's such a little fireball but I fucking get it... I'd be mad too. These kind of underhanded tricks are probably pulled on their average customer regularly with varying degrees of success, but Louis has the time and energy and inclination to fight back, and I love that.
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u/Adezar 6h ago
I was swapping out several of our gaming computers so I had bought 10 1TB SSDs from Samsung a few years ago, so each machine got a couple of those besides the M2.
Within a year 7 of them failed. I don't know what happened to Samsung but their quality didn't decline, it fell off a cliff.
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u/YaklDakl 7h ago
they/Samsung will probably opt to spend way more money on lawyers than give into him and send a message others can do the same. But i watched his video and it seems a judge would respect all the work Rossman has done to prove his case.
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u/yuusharo 6h ago
A $900 small claims court isn’t even worth putting on lawyer on the case for more than a few hours.
A judge will rule or it’ll settle for the difference.
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u/WorkWoonatic 4h ago
Samsung's best play here is to simply not show up, make Rossmann be the one to waste his time and then they just send him a replacement SSD when he wins by default.
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u/forty_three 4h ago
Yeah, I think the main reason he's taking them to court is precisely to send the message to the world that others shouldn't take this bullshit, either. It'll be interesting to see how much Samsung is willing to invest in this battle to prevent sending that message.
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u/tiradium 7h ago
Poor bastards are really unlucky to try and pull this on Louis of all the people they could have picked. Imagine if some clueless person accepted the RMA'd SSD and couldn't understand why its slower than an HDD
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u/gaeee983 5h ago
If they do it to him.. He did not even hide who he is, imagine how many other people they have done this too but did not have the energy or financials means to sue to make a statement. They just make a calculated risk "we make more money this way". Even with Louis winning, their policy still makes them money, the bigger risk is now the negative publicity, hopefully it is big enough to make waves.
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u/Sea_Perspective6891 7h ago edited 4h ago
I miss the days when $300 to $400 got you a decent 4TB SSD. This is strong arm robbery though.
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u/warcomet 5h ago
its...wait for it..capitalism mate..its the US forcing for it world over...
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u/happyscrappy 6h ago
Buried lede: the two sides can't even agree if the SSD is actually broken. I feel like there could be a 3rd party who wants to better investigate what's really going wrong here, why it works for Samsung and not Rossman.
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u/OldManJeepin 4h ago
Didn't Corsair get in hot water a few months ago, for that guy who sent the 2-stick RAM kit back, and they didn't have that exact kit, so they offered a refund in the amount he paid and not the actual market value, that day? I seem to remember Corsair answering they were under no obligation to upgrade his kit or pay him more than he paid for that kit, and getting away with it. I think it was talked about on Hardware Unboxed YT channel....
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u/AnyProgressIsGood 1h ago
samsung appliances are some of the WORST if you do your research. They fail far more than other brands
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u/sokos 7h ago
Why would such a big company nickel and dime the customer so badly? Like how many drives could possibly be returned during warranty periods? Wouldn't the negative press be a worse outcome than the couple hundred thousand that these returns could cost???
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u/militant_rainbow 6h ago
Samsung already has this reputation for fridges, washers and dryers, and other appliances. Exactly this type of behavior.
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u/detrebear 6h ago
Yea I have no fucking idea on what kind of circlejerking is going on at big companies that have them take the enshittification path
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u/pfn0 4h ago
I'm so confused why samsung isn't just replacing with the same drive instead of offering a cash compensation.
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u/yeti-biscuit 4h ago
Probably because the cost of manufacturing for Samsung has risen lately which causes the budget they'd reserved for returns of failed devices to peak.
Some business smarty pants at Samsung then decided it would be nice if the customer - who already spent their money on a Samsung product - bears that financial burden.
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u/letsgotgoing 6h ago
We bought more than a dozen hard drives from Amazon last year. Most were Seagate. When two of them failed, I contacted Seagate for a warranty replacement. They claimed the drives were only permitted for sale in Europe. I was told to contact the seller for a refund. Amazon verified that they were for sale in the USA (Amazon is an authorized reseller of Seagate hard drives and has an official Seagate web store on its website). I sent a strongly worded legal notice to Seagate stating that either their authorized reseller was advertising this drive as having a warranty and was committing fraud, they would be held accountable for authorizing the reseller to sell it to me, or they would honor the warranty. They agreed to honor the warranty. What a crazy world it is out there right now.
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u/piscano 5h ago
The same Samsung 870 EVO 2TB SSD that I bought in fall of 2024 for $170 is now $499 at Amazon.
Insanity
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u/Sandvicheater 2h ago
As someone who has butted heads regarding Samsung Refrigerator under Warranty this is par for the course for Samsung
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u/klauskiwi 5h ago
Samsung is a company with an horrendous customer care culture, and everyone should try to stay away from it.
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u/BadSausageFactory 7h ago
one of those rare times when 'do you have any idea who I am' would be appropriate
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u/DrAstralis 4h ago
The same Samsung that sold me a VR headset in Canada, from a Canadian store, in CAD that then told me they wont honor the warranty because it wasn't bought in America? That Samsung?
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u/Tight-Inspector-2748 2h ago
The moral of the story is don’t ever buy Samsung anything
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u/Ramorous 2h ago
I'm in the same boat. Have a 990 Pro 4tb drive and their refunding me what I paid although their warranty says market value. I am still waiting on a cheque for 6 months now.
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u/AstralVenture 6h ago edited 6h ago
I emailed him a couple of years ago about IFIXIT sending faulty batteries over and over again to me for iPhones and Macbook Pros, and they said there's no way. I'm not sure if it was him responding, but the advice he provides is usually wrong, and based on feelings.
"In no event will Samsung's liability exceed the amount paid by you for the product."
If a judge decides that this overarching liability limitation supersedes the "current market value" clause, the court may rule that Samsung fulfilled its legal obligation by offering the original $330 back.
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u/SeeTigerLearn 6h ago
It’s not quite the same thing, but I had a similar problem when someone smashed into my car and it should have been totaled. However the insurance company paid an enormous amount of money to repair everything. It was never the same and creaked and just was never right. When I tried to trade it in I was being offered only a fraction of what it had been worth. So I filed a diminution of value claim and received a check for the difference.
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u/DumbIdeaNo2 6h ago
White I hope this changes, there is zero chance Samsung will lose money when the investors demand he not do so. They could spend hundreds of millions of dollars, bury him, and then move on. Because guess what? The consumer can no longer boycott to get anything done. Unless a nation imposes criminal rules on the activity, which, there is zero incentive to do, this will continue and accelerate as long as money is to be made.
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u/PeggingIsPoggers 6h ago
I am so glad I got my 4TB SSD before the price hikes cause jfc $1000 for an SSD??????
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u/Xtranathor 5h ago
I have a similar issue, but in my case I've been waiting 2 years for Amazon to post me my SSD. I have to keep refusing a refund because it obviously won't cover buying it again right now.
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u/outdoorsnstuffz 5h ago
I am in the exact same situation with Amazon and seagate ! My god ! Exact same. 24 TB drive. Seagate has offered to replace if I pay shipping at least.
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u/RexKwanDo 5h ago
That particular drive (though the NVMe variant) for me was garbage on Home Assistant, I experienced frequent lockups and it never ran for longer than two weeks without one. I replaced it with a Western Digital Black and that has been rock solid.
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u/Alert-Helicopter5072 5h ago
Haven't looked into the full details yet but if the numbers in the headline are accurate this is a pretty straightforward case of a company offering a fraction of current market value as a settlement and hoping the customer just takes it. Rossmann is probably the worst person Samsung could have picked this fight with given that he has built an entire audience around exactly this kind of repair and consumer rights stuff. This is going to get way more attention than a quiet out of court settlement would have.
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u/emlgsh 5h ago
Pretty much this exact situation is why I abandoned Samsung as a provider for anything I manage. I managed to navigate above the "reading a script" tier of customer service and got in actual (email) writing that their refund/warranty policies are never honored and unenforceable.
It sucks for them since I was sourcing not just internal computer hardware but break-room appliances and common area displays exclusively under their brand for over a decade.
If anyone's curious, at least from the display and appliance side of things, LG seems like it stepped in and competes pretty directly with Samsung. For internal gear (solid state drives, specifically) I ended up favoring different manufacturers for different needs but gravitate towards PNY for general productivity and WD/Sandisk for performance.
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u/taboo8614 7h ago
I hope he wins!