I posted a much more in depth explanation but the mods killed my post because they said I was looking for tech support which I wasn’t. I made clear in my post I went through tech support and samsungs support ended with, 'Live without a phone for an indefinite amount of time while you mail in the phone and maybe you’ll get a phone back or not which I said was unacceptable. I am not expecting any tech support in this thread. I merely want people who are considering a samsung phone to know that if your phone is defective, samsung expects you to mail it back to them for an unknown amount of time during which you will have no phone for them to decide if they will fix it or give you a refund. That is all. I am in no way expecting anyone on this sub to solve my problem. I merely want people to know what samsung does to support their products.
My guess is that OP lives in a region where Samsung Support Centers dont exist. The last time I had a problem with my phone (battery replacement), I was able to walk in to the support center, give them my phone and come back hours later to pick up the fixed phone. And when I had bluetooth issues with my S-Pen, the guy behind the counter went through all the trouble shooting steps with me to figure out it was a dead S-Pen and nothing wrong with my phone.
My nearest samsung experience center is an hour drive away. We tried scheduling an appointment via the web site but the web site was broken. We called 6 times over 4 days during business hours and left voice mails every time and never got a callback. So we finally gave up and did the hour drive only to be told we had to have an appointment and we couldn’t just wait for a tech. We asked to schedule the next available slot while there in person and were told we had to use the web site. I opened my working samsung device and showed the person the web site wasn’t working to schedule the appointment and asked him if I was maybe doing it incorrectly. He said no it looks like the web site isn’t working and I need to call the tech support number that instructed me to go to the samsung experience center in the first place. It’s a hall of mirrors. (This is the Stanford CA location. Insanely staffed)
The key mistake we made was talking to tech support to begin with and following their instructions. We should have immediately returned the phone within the 14 day return period when we noticed Bluetooth was defective on the device instead of following tech support. Lesson learned.