B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal has told electronics giant Samsung to pay a B.C. man for breaching its warranty obligations for a cellphone.
According to a May 6 decision, Kerry Scarsbrook purchased a Samsung Galaxy A54 phone on Oct. 10, 2023.
“About two months after he bought it, the phone stopped accepting Mr. Scarsbrook’s passcode to unlock and operate it,” tribunal member Micah Carmody wrote. “Eventually, Samsung’s authorized service centre replaced the phone’s motherboard or mainboard, which corrected the issue.”
Scarsbrook claimed $346 for the repair cost and $1,360 in other damages, for a total of $1,706.
Samsung provided a one-year warranty against manufacturing defects, but it said there was no manufacturing defect in Scarsbrook’s situation.
Samsung claimed Scarsbrook refused to take all the recommended steps to address the locking issue.
Carmody said that, for Scarsbrook to succeed in his claim, he needed to establish the issues he experienced with his phone were, more likely than not, caused by a manufacturing defect.
Scarsbrook said the phone stopped accepting his passcode to unlock and operate it Dec. 8, 2023.
He kept logs provided in evidence of his attempts to rectify the situation.
With the help of a Samsung technician, he was able to unlock his phone and enter a new password.
“As documented in the December 9 log, he had to use Samsung’s ‘Find My Mobile’ website, lock the phone remotely, set up a new passcode, and then use the new passcode to unlock the phone,” Carmody said.
The next day, the password was not accepted and the phone locked again.
He was then passed to FutureTel, an authorized service centre.
FutureTel inspected the phone and deemed the issue to be the result of an active Find My Mobile lock on the phone.
Carmody said FutureTel apparently could not remove that lock and sent the phone back to Scarsbrook.
On Dec. 14, 2023, FutureTel emailed Scarsbrook instructions to unlock the phone on the same Find My Moblie website he had used before.
Scarsbrook says he received the phone back from FutureTel on Dec. 14, 2023, and then carried out the instructions in the email.
“This is supported by his December 18, 2023 email to Samsung, where he confirmed that he had followed the instructions without success,” Carmody said. “The phone said that because of too many attempts to unlock it, it had been locked permanently and Samsung had to reset it.”
Soon, he was told a locked phone was out of warranty and that he had to pay for a new mainboard for the phone.
Samsung claimed the phone locking issue could have been resolved in other ways, but Scarsbrook refused or failed to take the recommended steps to remove the Find My Moblie lock from the phone.
“It says he is responsible for the mainboard replacement cost because he was aware that it was [an] out-of-warranty repair,” Carmody said.
Carmody ruled Scarsbrook followed Samsung’s directions, and that the service centre offered no solution other than to replace the mainboard.
"I find Samsung breached the warranty by failing to cover the cost of replacing the mainboard,” Carmody said.
Carmody stressed the decision does not mean to suggest that all passcode-rejection problems represent manufacturing defects.
“This decision is based on unique facts, and in particular Samsung’s failure to explain why nothing short of mainboard replacement fixed the issue,” Carmody said.
