A Samsung Story

The happy buyer.


Spot the difference.


Bringing the TV home.


New love.


Hey there again! Time to share another rather interesting happening here in Down Under...

As you may be aware, we have become big Samsung fans since moving into our nice apartment. Samsung gave us a pretty good deal on our brand new refrigerator and washing machine... which we got for $800 in total! For branded goods and spankingly new - it's a steal! Actually, we had haggled the salesman for it, even volunteering to take the display sets just so we could get both machines at cheaper rates!

So when the deal was made, the salesmen started to load up the new white goods onto a trolley and wheeled it over to our rented van. At this point, the gleaming new machines were rather carelessly removed from their display stands and dumped at the foot of our van! Horrified that the expensive stuff was gonna roll around the back of our van and collect dents and scratches, we insisted on some cardboard boxes, at least to line the van.. The store apparently didn't even have newspaper... Can you believe that?! Well, we couldn't and refused to budge from not wrapping up the machines. In the end, the store people brought out new, un-opened goods and we got them at no additional price! Wooo hooo!! New goods for the display price! heh heh..

That was a month ago when we were setting up.

At that time, we squeezed out almost every last cent and bought a cheap, lcd, 22" slim tv.. We figured that tv was an absolute necessity.. (it is!) We would've bought a giant screen, old, analogue one but thinking that in a couple of months, analogue tv is gonna stop and the whole of Aussie will be switching to digital tv. Rather than spend more money to buy the digital tuner, we thought let's just keep up with the technology and buy a cheap LCD tv..

So we bought a tv from Hicon.

Yea... what's that you say? Our same response. We have never heard of it but a rather annoying saleswoman convinced us it's a really good deal. So, we bought her sell and..

The sound was bad. You had to turn it up to almost 90% to hear decently.

Picture quality was OK only. But worst of all...

It stopped receiving the digital signal 2 weeks later. (So we were stuck with watching analogue tv on a lcd.. sigh)

Finally last weekend, we rented a bomb (it's the name of the car rental place.. haha) and drove all the way back to Highpoint, Maribronyg and "persuaded" the store to let us upgrade for a better model. Actually, they already told us OK and we could upgrade our tv as long as we returned the whole part of the faulty set. We forgot to bring the remote control.

So we took another 45 min to return home, grab the remote control and headed back to Highpoint. When we arrived, that same (annoying) saleswoman asked us " where's the box?" And hearing that we had thrown it out, she insisted we take another new Hicon becoz without the box, they couldn't return it to the factory. Get this - so that they could repair it and resell it!!! Gie told her why can't they print a new box?! It probably only cost them 20c to do it!

The nerve of that woman kept insisting us to take the new Hi-con and if the 2nd one spoils, they have more reason to go back to the factory and get their credit back. What?! We have to wait for the Hi-con to konk out on us again, rent a car to drive it down, and argue with these people?! We already have a faulty Hicon with a 2 week life-line, why on earth would we want another one?!

Sometimes, these people really didn't make sense. Here we have a faulty set which would easily justify the store getting their credit back. But they want us to take another one and if that spoils, then they would allow us an upgrade. HUH? All becoz we threw out the box.. The manager could even tell us that he keeps all his boxes when we asked whether a reasonable person would keep all the boxes. He must be using appliance boxes as furniture or he has a really huge garage. We are giving them more business and they want to argue with us. Or maybe it was already 5pm and they wanted to close coz the WOMAN was so frustrated with us, she told the manager she couldn't deal with us anymore. The manager told us to come back the next day and we could resume our discussion.. we didn't want to leave until he gave us his word that we wouldn't go home empty handed.

Later that day, Freddy and co didn't seem supportive nor convinced that we could get our way. Haha.. perhaps we sounded pretty demanding and difficult but we just didn't see why on earth they wouldn't want to let us upgrade.. over a stupid box! But if 2 tvs spoil, then we could upgrade! Didn't make business-sense to us. In any case, maybe they went home to sleep on it.. coz when we arrived in the morning, that woman came over and asked us to choose which tv we wanted! Haha.. no fight or arguments or anything.. just walked in and bought ourselves a new tv for $600 more..

So... introducing the new love in our home... Our beloved Samsung sleek, black tv with a swivel stand, 32" LCD monitor with high definition and in-built digital tuner and we would go on and on but in short... It's a beauty!!! Hahaha.. So happy with it now and we both promised ourselves, no more no-name brands for us!

Here's leaving you with photos from Jazz in the park (a pwc event) and Cirocco (a diy sushi event).