A few weeks ago I noticed that my Nexus 10 tablet wasn’t charging properly. I poked around online and found a number for Samsung’s customer support, so I called them up.

The lady I spoke to was very nice. We ran into confusion, though, because when I looked in the settings where my model number ought to be, all it said was “Nexus 10.” Apparently there was supposed to be something else. She gave me a ticket number and said I should call back in a few days, at which point her supervisor would have made the arrangements to put me manually into the system, which would allow them to send me a shipping label to get the tablet repaired.

Seemed good to me, so I thanked her, hung up, and waited.

When I called back, my first call got dropped. On a second try, the guy I talked to seemed to have no awareness of this having happened, despite the ticket number. He asked for my model number, and when I told him it only said “Nexus 10,” he said somebody would call me back in one to two days, after his supervisor made the arrangements to put me manually into the system, which would allow them to send me a shipping label to get the tablet repaired.

It took something more like three or four days, but I did get a call back from a woman saying there was some confusion about the lack of model number, but that she suspected the problem was that my tablet is wi-fi only, and they’re the department for tablets that are registered with a carrier for cellular service. She asked me to call her back and gave her a number.

Let me say for the record that up until this point, I feel like the service I’d received was less than ideal, but basically par for the course with this kind of thing.

That’s about to change.

Today (having been busy for several days, plus the holiday weekend seemed like a bad time to follow up), I call the number I’ve been given. It has a menu. Press 1 for mobile devices, tablets, etc. Okay. Press 3 for tablets. Okay. Press 1 for wi-fi only tablets. Progress, right? I seem to have had the wrong department before, but now I’ll get the right one. I press 1, 3, 1, and get a customer service rep to talk to.

“Can I have your phone number? First and last name? Verify your email address? Thank you. How can I help you today?”

I explain that I have a wi-fi only Nexus 10 tablet that isn’t charging properly, and I’m trying to send it in for repair.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not able to do anything about that here. I’ll have to transfer you to another department.”

. . . not sure why the people under the wi-fi tablet option can’t help me with my wi-fi tablet, but okay. But note: in the eight or so times I called this number and went through this process, I’m fairly certain that I did not get transferred to the same department each time. I’m not positive, since I didn’t take notes, but I’m pretty sure.

And here’s where things get terrible. No matter where I get transferred to, I’m in the wrong place — and it’s blatantly obvious that half the reps aren’t even listening to what I say, because when they ask what I’m calling for, I say it’s a wi-fi only Nexus 10 tablet . . . and then a little while later they are surprised to discover my tablet is wi-fi only, or a Nexus, and they’re going to have to transfer me to somebody who can help with that. One call, I get transferred four times, and I know for a fact that at least two of those transfers were to the wi-fi department. Meaning the wi-fi department sent me somewhere else (I think it was the Nexus department), and then somebody else sent me back. The rep doing the sending back apologizes and says something vague about them having trouble with their phone system. This must be true, because that call gets dropped while I’m waiting to talk to the wi-fi department again — and that is not the only time I get dropped, because I’m not calling Samsung eight times in one afternoon just for shits and giggles. I get dropped once while the initial rep is going through her opening spiel. I get dropped when I’m on hold. I get dropped when somebody picks me up from hold and asks what department I’m trying to reach. At no point can anybody give me the number of the department I’m supposed to be talking to, because apparently they don’t actually have the numbers; they only have a phone system they can use to transfer me.

I’m composing this post while I’m on hold — but not for the wi-fi department, or the Nexus department. I’m on hold waiting to tell Samsung that they have the shittiest customer service I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. I’ve been waiting to tell them this for forty minutes now, and nobody has picked up.

Basically, Samsung doesn’t give a fuck. I can’t take my device to someplace local to get it repaired, because it’s a tablet; apparently the only way I can get it fixed is to mail it to the manufacturer and wait for them to send it back. But I can’t even do that, because they can’t be bothered to meet the bare minimum standards of actually helping their customers.

I broke off writing this post because after forty-five minutes on hold, I finally got a competent customer service rep who neither attempted to transfer me nor dropped my call. She gave me a new ticket number and her extension, so that if I have to call back, I can (theoretically) get hold of her again and not be sent around the merry-go-round for the millionth time. I’m still waiting — yet again — for someone to set up whatever’s necessary to deal with the lack of model number, but I supplied my proof of purchase, so maybe this time it’ll work? We’ll see.

Not gonna lie, though. I’m not holding my breath.