Under certain circumstances, Samsung forces devices to be destroyed rather than repaired. For this reason, iFixit ended its cooperation with Samsung.
Samsung Galaxy Those who take their devices for repair may receive their devices back in pieces. Under certain circumstances, Samsung forces service providers to disassemble devices and send customer personal data to the company instead of repairing them. This caused iFixit to end its collaboration with Samsung. After more than two years, iFixit announced that it will stop selling original replacement parts for Galaxy smartphones in June 2024. The company cited high spare parts costs and Samsung’s device design making repairs difficult for the end of the collaboration.
Samsung’s Repair Policies Destroy Devices Due for Repair
404 Media According to a report by Samsung, the problems Samsung is creating for independent repair providers are much deeper. Anyone who wants to buy original spare parts from Samsung must inform the company of their name, contact information, home address, IMEI number and fault details for each repair performed. Even more dramatically, if a repair service provider discovers a third-party replacement part installed on a Galaxy device as part of a previous repair, they must immediately disassemble the smartphone, tablet or laptop into its individual parts and notify Samsung of the details of the incident involved.
You can find iFixir’s explanation here. Even though the page is in German, it can be easily translated with Google Translate.
If a service provider refuses to destroy the customer’s device, Samsung will terminate the service contract and the store will no longer be able to purchase original replacement parts. This means they cannot offer repairs for Samsung devices. Since third-party spare parts are regularly used to reduce the cost of repairs or make up for a shortage of original spare parts, service providers must destroy devices rather than repair them if they want to honor their contracts with Samsung.
Samsung also prohibits repair shops from repairing components on the motherboard. Instead, the entire component needs to be replaced, which can greatly increase costs. The contract, viewed by 404 Media, concerns repair service providers in the United States. At the time of publishing this article, it was not yet known whether the same conditions applied to repair shops in Europe. Samsung has not yet commented on the issue.