"What Am I Supposed to Do With Holiday Food?"... Latest Refrigerators Go Dead

[Anchor]

Some Samsung Electronics refrigerators have completely frozen and stopped working during a software update. This is causing ongoing inconvenience for consumers who had stocked up on groceries ahead of the Chuseok holiday.

Reporter Jeong Seong-jin has the details.

[Reporter]

The lights are out in a refrigerator packed with food ingredients, and only a message indicating that an update is in progress remains on the display panel.

[Lim / Affected Consumer: That guidance message just kept appearing, and it's been completely dead ever since.]

This happened after users received a notification on the "SmartThings" app, which controls Samsung Electronics home appliances, and proceeded with a refrigerator software update on the afternoon of September 22.

[Lim / Affected Consumer: I have to throw away all the food ingredients inside, and because I bought the food before the holiday, I couldn't even sleep well out of worry.]

When they requested after-sales service from Samsung Electronics, even more absurd responses were given.

[Kim / Affected Consumer: They told me that after-sales service would be available next Tuesday, after Chuseok... When the customer service representative said, "Cases like this happen sometimes during the update process," I was dumbfounded and bewildered.]

As consumer complaints poured out starting from online communities, Samsung Electronics stepped up to contain the issue, stating that it has formed an emergency response team and will take measures to complete the recovery of the affected products by today.

Repair costs will be covered free of charge in full, and whether to compensate for food spoilage is under review.

Samsung Electronics explained that the problem occurred because an update file that was still under the testing process was mistakenly distributed.

The affected products are reportedly mostly some Bespoke AI refrigerator models produced last year, and the number of damage reports received so far is said to be in the hundreds.

[Kim / Affected Consumer: If an electronic device becomes completely unusable just because you pressed update once, isn't this a major defect...]

With home appliances becoming increasingly dependent on software due to the introduction of AI and other factors, a comprehensive inspection appears necessary for the entire process, ranging from the update procedure to recovery and response after a failure occurs.

(Video reporting: Kim Nam-sung, Lee Chan-soo | Video editing: Park Ji-in | Design: Kang Yoon-jung)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.