My wife's 15 month old Samsung Galaxy Note II was unable to power on. I went to the Samsung Service Centre and paid the mandatory $30 evaluation fee only to be told that the motherboard, subboard and LCD display needed to be replaced and will cost $552. When I remarked to them that a brand new phone will cost $530, they then offered a discount on the repair bill.
As I doubted very much that all 3 components can fail together, I decided to take the phone to a 3rd party repair shop and they immediately diagnosed the problem to a faulty processor chip. They told me that this is a very common problem for Samsung handphones and will replace this chip for $180. I was then able to collect my fully functional handphone the following day.
When I wrote to Samsung Singapore to share this bad experience with them, they remarked that "As an Authorised Service Center, we reserve the right to replace the necessary part to remedy the product issue.... " I was taken aback by their reply and it makes me wonder what part or parts would have been replaced if I were to have simply trusted their judgement.
It also makes me wonder how thorough their evaluation process is for the $30 that one has to pay them to do this evaluation. It will also be interesting to know how many other consumers paid this $30 evaluation fee and was then told that the same 3 components failed.
Mr Leong