Richard Wygand plugged in his Samsung Galaxy S4 to get some much needed juice, but instead, he found himself with a fire.
A glitch in the hardware seemed to spark an electrical fire in the charging port of the device, which melted off a piece of that section, leaving the phone in pretty bad shape—as you can see in the pictures Wygand posted to social media. Obviously, that phone had seen its last day, and Wygand was in need of a new device.
As you would expect, he was pretty pissed with the situation. Along with the pictures he posted, he also made a YouTube video to showcase the damage. Wygand was pretty animate about getting the media shared, to warn other Samsung owners of the potentially dangerous glitch with the charging port. His video and pictures began to pick up a little steam, and then Samsung took notice. According to Wygand, Samsung told him to take down the pictures and video per their terms, if he wanted his phone replaced (you can read the letter here or watch his video above.) So, in a bit of clever marketing, a rep from Nokia also took note of Wygand's postings, and sent him a tweet, offering to send Wygand a free Lumia phone so he "can experience how customer service should *really* work."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how companies should use social media—and not by faking hacks to get followers, ahem, Chipotle.
