Samsung Might Be Going To Court Over A Major YouTuber's Warranty Claim

Louis Rossmann, a tech YouTuber with over 2.5 million subscribers who owns a tech repair and data recovery shop, had his Samsung 990 Pro 4TB SSD give out within the warranty period. He rightfully contacted Samsung — usually one of the best SSD manufacturers out there — for a replacement, and, after a long back and forth, received a very disappointing conclusion where Samsung offered him a refund of just one-third of the price of a replacement. According to a YouTube video he posted just a few days ago, Rossmann claims that if Samsung refuses to give him a replacement or a full refund, he'll take the company to court within 60 days.

When he originally bought the SSD a year ago — before the supply shortage that led to memory and RAM prices skyrocketing — it was priced at around $330. The SSD then failed within the warranty period, and he forwarded details proving that the SSD had failed to Samsung. The company affirmed that his tests were correct and did show that the drive was dead. However, after taking it in for testing, the support team closed the ticket and sent it back, claiming that the SSD passed all consumer use tests and was functioning fine.

While this may be the end of it for most users, Rossmann's team deals with SSDs for a living. He tested the drive again in his lab with a PC-3000 Express — one of the most powerful tools in drive diagnosis — and got drive write speeds as low as 40-60 MBps, whereas a brand new 990 Pro is supposed to transfer data at a rate of 7,450 MBps.

The tech YouTuber contacted Samsung again with the updated test logs and claimed that a failure to fulfill the warranty will lead to him filing a lawsuit against the multinational corporation within 60 days. This led to Samsung backtracking and stating that it could honor the warranty, but there were no replacements available due to a shortage of memory chips — most likely due to AI data centers buying them all. Samsung said it could only reimburse him for his original payment, which was around $330.

With a new Samsung 990 Pro costing about $900, this meant that Samsung would only be paying Rossmann back for one-third of a replacement, and he'd have to fund the rest himself if he wanted to get a new SSD. Furthermore — and perhaps even more frustratingly — Rossmann found that the same SSD was available on Amazon — in fact, you can order more than ten of them today — refuting Samsung's claims of a shortage in supply.

Samsung's SSD warranty policy states that "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."

This shows that Samsung does have the right to choose to offer a refund instead of a replacement, but Rossmann claims that since the wording directly states "...if Samsung is unable to repair or replace the Product," and the product is on Amazon and in fact able to be replaced, this goes against the terms of the warranty. Furthermore, since the policy mentions that the refund is based on the current market value at the time of the claim and Samsung is currently selling these SSDs for $900, Rossmann should be getting the full refund either way.

Rossmann claims that he isn't after a refund or a monetary benefit — he'll be losing more paying for a lawyer than what he'd get from a refund. Instead, he doesn't want companies like Samsung to get away with ripping the average consumer off without consequence in the future.