[Galaxy S I9000 General] blue163:
Just how did you get them to agree to this?! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Samsung should send me a UPS label so I can send the phone in. At the beginning I would have even been willing to pay $20 to ship the phone to them if they would just accept it and repair it.

For anybody else who has been putting up with this crap, let me share my story:

My phone died friday morning. I called samsung no less than 10 times on friday and twice more on saturday trying to get them to agree to replace my phone and every single time I was told the same thing: "Samsung does NOT fix phones", that it was through carriers only. They told me to call Bell, I told them I don't have any accounts with Bell so they told me to call my carrier, that it wouldn't matter who takes it in, that Samsung has carrier agreements with all of them and that it WOULD get fixed. I called Bell who literally laughed at me and said they would not fix it unless I had an active account with them. I called Rogers (my carrier) who was completely confused and refused to service a phone they don't even carry.

Since I bought it from bell and didn't have a current bell plan (told them i was using it on wi-fi only) that I was totally stuck. I kept on calling Samsung and reminding them that the warranty booklet itself dictates that SAMSUNG will repair the phone, not my carrier, and I got no further. Every single person said exactly the same thing.

Finally I ended up caving, going to a bell store, opening a pre-paid account and then calling their data support number to have my phone replaced. They told me I had to take it to a bell store that dealt with phone repairs so I drove to the closest store where an employee told me about the new procedure and demanded I call data support back while in their store and he would "set them straight". After the data support person told me this is NOT their policy, he got on the phone, yelled at them very rudely and loudly then hung up. Told me he guesses there is nothing he can do, that he will NOT take my phone for repair and that I should keep calling data support until I get somebody smart, and that I should do it from "outside their store". Since I had no working cell phone and I figured I was stuck again I went home and called bell support again, who told me a second time to take it to a repair store. I called another Bell store who handles repairs and they told me the same thing as the first store, they will not accept my phone and that I need to be calling data support until they replace it. I then called every other bell repair store in the city and got the same story. I called Bell twice more last night and I had no luck at all. None of them would admit to this new policy and told me to take it in to a store for repair.

I gave up for the night at this point. Today I got up, called data support again and much to my surprise the first person I talked to said he knew all about this policy, took about 5 minutes then told me that my new phone would be at my house within 3-5 business days. FINALLY!

What a complete joke this repair process has been. At this point I am now absolutely furious with Samsung and will be filing a report with the BBB about their warranty practices. As far as I am concerned it was their obligation to honor the warranty and they have wasted 7 hours of my time forcing me to harass Bell, wasting a couple hours of their time as well, until they finally opened me a free pre-paid account (pay as you go with a 0 balance) and agreed to ship me a new phone.

tl;dr: It took about 20 phone calls with over 7 hours on the phone, 1 hour in store and 1 hour of driving before Bell (who is not even my carrier) agreed to open me a free account and replace my phone. Samsung service SUCKS and I will be filing with the BBB about their warranty practices.