Louis Rossmann, a technology YouTuber with over 2.5 million subscribers and owner of a technical repair and data recovery shop, had his Samsung 990 Pro 4TB SSD fail during the warranty period. He rightly contacted Samsung – generally one of the best SSD manufacturers – for a replacement and, after much back and forth, received a very disappointing conclusion in which Samsung offered him a refund of only a third of the price of a replacement. According to a YouTube video he posted a few days ago, Rossmann claims that if Samsung refuses to provide him with a replacement or full refund, he will sue the company within 60 days.
When he bought the SSD a year ago – before the supply shortage that caused memory and RAM prices to skyrocket – its price was around $330. The SSD then failed during the warranty period and he forwarded details to Samsung proving that the SSD had failed. The company claimed its tests were fine and showed the drive was dead. However, after testing it, the support team closed the ticket and resent it, saying that the SSD had passed all consumer use tests and was working properly.
Samsung says it cannot offer replacement due to supply shortage
While this may be the end 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 diagnostics – and got write speeds as low as 40 to 60 MB/s, while a brand new 990 Pro is claimed to transfer data at a rate of 7,450 MB/s.
The tech YouTuber contacted Samsung again with the updated test logs and claimed that breaching the warranty would lead him to take legal action against the multinational company within 60 days. This led Samsung to backtrack and say it could honor the warranty, but no replacements were available due to a shortage of memory chips – likely due to AI data centers buying them all up. Samsung said it could only reimburse him for his initial payment, which was about $330.
With a new Samsung 990 Pro costing around $900, that meant Samsung would only reimburse Rossmann for a third of the replacement, and he’d have to finance the rest himself if he wanted to get a new SSD. Additionally – and perhaps even more frustrating – Rossmann discovered that the same SSD was available on Amazon – in fact, you can order more than ten today – refuting Samsung’s claims of a supply shortage.
Samsung Warranty Policy
Samsung’s SSD warranty policy states that “Samsung, at its option: (1) will repair or replace the product with a new or refurbished product of equal or greater capacity and functionality; or (2) will refund the then current merchant 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 has 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 can in fact be replaced, this goes against the terms of the warranty. Additionally, 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 get the full refund anyway.
Rossmann says he’s not looking for a refund or monetary benefit — he’ll lose more by paying a lawyer than he would get from a refund. Instead, he doesn’t want companies like Samsung to get away with ripping off the average consumer without consequences in the future.
