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Even though many components inside our gaming PCs are exceptionally expensive, enthusiasts are still happy to buy them, partly because they know every item is backed by a warranty. However, that assumes a company is willing to honour that warranty in the first place, and in one such case concerning a Samsung SSD, the responses to the claim have been so negative that it's resulting in a lawsuit.
The SSD in question is a 4 TB Samsung 990 Pro, a somewhat pricey but otherwise pretty decent Gen4 solid state drive. But as explained by Louis Rosmann, the famous tech YouTuber, repair shop owner, and consumer rights advocate, they can fail, just as any mass-manufactured PC component can.
In his YouTube video on the matter, he describes how he bought the 990 Pro drive roughly a year ago from Best Buy, but that it stopped responding to commands in his RAID-1 array. But since it was still within warranty, he contacted Samsung to RMA it, though his internal alarm bell was already clanging over the fact that this model has practically quadrupled in price since he bought it.
Although his initial inquiry started well, the first hiccup was that Rosmann was unaware that he had contacted Samsung Canada B2B support desk, rather than the USA one (he's based in Austin, Texas, for context). He duly compiled, providing all the necessary information again, apart from one seemingly innocuous piece of data: a photo of the 990 Pro. As he was at work at the time, and the Samsung SSD was still in his computer back home, he couldn't immediately give them what they wanted.
The very next day, Rossmann received an email from Samsung saying that it had closed the support ticket because he hadn't sent over a photo within 24 hours (even though it wasn't actually 24 hours later). Do note that Rossmann openly displays all this correspondence in the video.
Eventually, this all gets sorted, and Samsung contacts Rossmann with details on how to return the drive and so on. That all goes smoothly until a repair statement is sent back to him, stating that "based on the test results, the returned drive was verified as good." The consumer rights activist then queried this, but heard nothing back. Instead, Samsung just returned the drive to him.
In the video, Rossmann then demonstrates the drive in action, showing inconsistent write speeds of 20 to 160 MB/s. That would be slow for an old SATA HDD, let alone a 6,900 MB/s PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. To even the untrained eye, that drive is goosed, and Rossmann's eyes are highly trained, as he runs a data recovery service in his repair shop.
Naturally, he fires off… how shall I put it?...a somewhat stern but clearly worded email about everything that has transpired, the issue at hand, and consumer rights that protect his warranty claim. Samsung's response to this ("we apologize for the inconvenience or any confusion you may have experienced") only riles him further.
But then the real kicker drops at the end of the response: "As you may already be aware, there is a very big shortage of memory products across the market. Due to this issue, the warranty service does not currently have your model of SSD in stock for replacement or a comparable model for upgrade."
Rossmann then points out that Samsung's store on Amazon has plenty of 4 TB 990 Pros in stock for $949, and argues that stock levels aren't a problem at all. Anyway, he eventually decides that this whole thing is so ridiculous that the only solution for him is to file a small claims lawsuit. "I look forward to costing you more money in legal fees than what you would have paid to simply replace my drive," he says to the camera.
I suspect that when it comes to DRAM and SSDs, this kind of situation isn't especially rare, and Rossmann describes the "wrong thing to do" that many PC users would actually carry out, to get a working replacement: Buy a new $949 Samsung 990 Pro, stick his broken SSD in the box, and then file a chargeback based on receiving 'faulty goods'.
As someone with a whole host of large and currently hugely expensive SSDs in my primary PC, I'm dreading the day when one or more of them decide to fail, whether it's in or out of the warranty period. Because either way, it looks like I'm going to be faced with a large bill to get the solution I want.
But if the likes of Rossmann are willing to keep fighting for our consumer rights this way, then perhaps I'll get lucky and only have to sell one of my kidneys on the black market, instead of both of them (plus my one decently working lung).
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