We survived a dryer fire the day after Christmas. We caught it as it was starting, thankfully. A couple of blasts from the fire extinguisher, a visit from the fire department, no damage to home or family, I figured the next steps were to contact Samsung support.

The good. The Samsung support team was very interested in the health and well being of home and family. I surmised it was their script. Regardless, they handled that well.

The (appearance of) better. Our 4-5-year-old, top of the line, award-winning, super awesome Consumer Reports highly rated, Samsung dryer was out of warranty. After support escalation, we were granted a one time out of warranty service check.

Still better (so far), the service techs arrived within 48 hours of my initial support call. They took pictures, video chat with remote folks. Very attentive. Overall a pleasant experience.

Some meh. Service folks said it’d take 2 – 3 business days to get a decision about the next steps. No worries initially. We quickly adapted to a system of running a couple washing machine loads at the home, then running to a local laundromat to dry the close. Those industrial laundromat dryers condensed drying times from 45 minutes to over an hour with the pre-dryer fire down to 16-22 minutes. Bonus points, the laundromat has a pinball machine! My first rusty run, almost 20 million points. I would have made a play for the high score, but the family was impressed enough with 22 minutes to dry and encouraged me to abandon my pinball ecstasy or uber myself home when I ran out of quarters.

The downhill slide. We were slightly content with our work-around with the laundromat. It brought about nostalgia from years past. It provided the family with new experiences and conversations. We were making the best of an inconvenient situation while the Samsung support/warranty folks work our case through the system.

Then the bad. Still no word from Samsung. Worse, the laundromat visits went from mildly inconvenient to abject hell … some dip wad broke the right flipper button on the pinball machine. I barely made it over 1.7million left flipper use only. This situation was very clearly now, untenable. I immediately started looking for replacement dryer in the local classified ads, all while still in a cursing rant about the type of people who break pinball machines.

Happy ending. Found slightly used, well-maintained replacement … in our neighborhood, and for a fraction of the cost I was prepared to spend.

Bonus points. Our washer and dryer now are mixed race representing our family mix. I never thought I would be excited about that … its the little wins.

customer service Daily Family life Photography samsung