Generous Galaxy S22 Ultra trade-ins earned a customer over $100K, but Samsung is late in paying up

Ben Schoon | Jul 23 2022 - 10:00 am PT

Samsung generally has generous trade-in credits available with a new smartphone, and the Galaxy S22 Ultra was no exception to that rule. However, one user who took full advantage of that credit with over 100 smartphones is still owed tens of thousands of dollars, and Samsung isn’t paying out entirely.

In a Reddit post from earlier this week, one user claims that he purchased 125 Galaxy S22 Ultras over the course of three months, with three orders having been placed. The phones were purchased as work devices for an office. Not even including taxes and other fees, that’s a hefty purchase of $150,000.

But luckily, with Samsung’s generous trade-in policies, swapping out devices came with a discount of $103,053 after all trade-ins were completed – through Samsung’s business channels, trade-in credits are paid back after the purchase, rather than before, as is the case with Samsung’s consumer trade-ins.

At least, that was supposed to be what happened.

Apparently, Samsung has so far not paid back the full amount of the trade-in credits for these Galaxy S22 Ultra devices, a total amounting to $45,593 in outstanding expected credits. The three purchases break down as follows:

Purchase 1: 50 devices – Paid $55,499 – Trade-in credit expected $35,880
Purchase 2: 50 devices – Paid $59,113 – Trade-in credit expected $42,173
Purchase 3: 25 devices – Paid $26,823 – Trade-in credit expected $25,000

With the first order, the situation is fairly cut-and-dry. The buyer was supposed to get $35,880 in trade-in credit, but received none. Samsung confirmed receipt of the trade-in devices, but never paid out the credits.

With the second purchase, a Samsung sales representative had to apply an additional $2,113 credit on top of a $40,060 trade-in credit due to errors on Samsung’s website. With this purchase, Samsung did pay out a credit of $35,460, claiming that only 43 of the expected 50 devices were sent for trade-ins. Samsung later contacted the buyer, saying that the additional $4,600 credit would be sent, but around two weeks later, that credit still hasn’t been paid out.

And finally, with the smallest purchase of the bunch, Samsung paid out $22,000 instead of the expected $25,000 because the company claimed it only received 22 out of 25 total devices, despite evidence saying otherwise.

To summarize, Samsung has paid out $57,460 of the owed credits, but still owes $45,593.

In attempting to get the situation resolved and recover the owed $45,000 in trade-in credits, the buyer filed a chargeback with American Express, which paid out $9,713 to cover the owed funds from the second and third purchases. But so far, the buyer has not had any luck recovering the $35,000+ outstanding balance from the first purchase, despite constant talks with Samsung’s business support lines and even trying to get in touch with Samsung executives.

While this is certainly a crazy story, it’s definitely not how things go for most folks, especially through consumer channels. Hopefully, things will go smoothly for everyone with future devices, especially as Samsung prepares to ramp up more trade-in deals for the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Flip 4, which can you can reserve now.