News worsens for Samsung: U.S. recalls Galaxy Note 7 amid new reports of S7 fires
Samsung’s problems are getting worse as the company tries to orchestrate the replacement of 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, which have been found to explode and catch fire.
On Thursday, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission stepped in with a formal recall. Its chairman, Elliot Kaye, blasted Samsung for trying to do the recall on its own, saying that anyone who believes that to be adequate “needs to have more than their phone checked.”
Samsung promised replacement devices, but that was put on hold while regulators reviewed the situation. Kaye said customers will now be offered full refunds, not just replacement devices, if they choose. Note 7 owners need to contact Samsung and provide a number from the back of the phone to determine whether that unit is at risk.
The recall comes at a crucial time for Samsung, as its rival Apple just announced its own latest versions of the iPhone. The Note series is one of Samsung’s most expensive, and demand for the phone had been high.
If that were not bad enough, there is now a report that the Samsung Galaxy S7, a separate smartphone that has been on the market since March, may have caused a car fire in Port St. Lucie, Fla., ABC News reported. While police were initially investigating whether a Galaxy Note 7 was the cause of that fire, the wife of the car’s owner told ABC that the smartphone was a Galaxy S7.
Doubts about the safety of the other Samsung products would be a major problem for Samsung. Not only has the Galaxy S7 been a big hit, the smartphone is being offered to consumers as part of the current replacement program.
It’s not clear whether this latest fire was caused by the same problem as the Galaxy Note 7 fires, whether it could be part of a separate issue or whether it is an isolated incident. Neither Samsung nor the Consumer Product Safety Commission immediately responded to a request for comment on whether the recall may be expanded to include other Samsung devices.
Then there’s last week, when a California man filed a suit against Samsung alleging that the Galaxy S7 Edge - a larger version of the S7, with a curved screen - exploded and burned him, according to a USA Today report.
That followed a report from the Sun newspaper in Britain that an S7 Edge had exploded in a teacher’s hands. Samsung told the Sun: “There are no known safety issues with Galaxy S7 devices. This issue is currently being investigated, and our customer services team is in contact with the customer regarding the matter.”
U.S. aviation safety officials also have taken the unusual step of warning airline passengers not to turn on or charge the phone during flights, or put them in checked bags.
The process of recalling an estimated 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones from users has been messy. When reports of explosions first surfaced in Korean media, Samsung initiated a voluntary replacement program, encouraging customers to turn off their phones and trade them in to Samsung or their carriers. But those actions drew criticism from Consumer Reports and others who said that the seriousness of the defect merited a formal recall, which would make it illegal to continue selling the phones.
Thus far, Samsung appears to have weathered the negative effects of what will surely be a costly recall of the Note 7. The firm’s stock, which dropped precipitously after the initial reports of explosions, started to recover Tuesday. Shares closed up 4.23 percent on the Korean stock market before trading stopped for the week because of a national holiday and after analysts said that even the negative coverage and confusion over the Note 7 replacement program had not yet seemed to hurt the firm’s overall smartphone sales.
Yet if the Galaxy Note 7 issue triggers more concerns about safety issues with that and other smartphones in Samsung’s line, the firm may be looking at a much larger problem than it initially anticipated.
The Associated Press contributed.
This story was originally published September 15, 2016 at 5:01 PM with the headline "News worsens for Samsung: U.S. recalls Galaxy Note 7 amid new reports of S7 fires."