Investigators from the arson unit at the Louisville Fire Department
showed up on the tarmac, seized the device, and questioned Green. But
Green, they quickly realized, had done nothing wrong. The problem lay in
the phone that he had bought, loved, and admired.
—
THE GALAXY NOTE 7 had been a source of trouble for two months in South
Korea, in the United States, and around the world. But everyone had
assumed the problem had been resolved. Since late August, Samsung had
documented ninety-two instances of its new, much-heralded Galaxy Note
7 device overheating in the hands and homes and cars of its customers. A
number of them caught fire thanks to what Samsung claimed were faulty
batteries.
After three weeks of stumbling and stammering around the faulty
device, Samsung had begun to recall the Galaxy Note 7s in the United
States. As the company had advised, Brian Green had exchanged his new
Note 7 at the AT&T store two weeks before his flight.
Green had studied the replacement phone and its packaging carefully.
All indications on Samsung’s packaging were that the device was safe to
use. The box was marked with a black square, indicating a replacement
device rather than an original Note 7. When he punched the new phone’s
IMEI—a unique fifteen-digit number on every device—into Samsung’s
recall eligibility website, he got this recorded response: “Great News!
Your device is NOT in the list of affected devices.”
After the evacuation, Brian called Samsung’s customer service line.
“I did everything I was supposed to,” he explained to the Samsung rep.
“This was a recalled phone.”
The rep patched his message into a ticketing system. Green wondered
when he’d hear back from Samsung. The company was slow to treat the
incident as a public-safety issue. Instead, when journalists followed up on
the incident, the company sounded skeptical that the phone was at fault.
“Until we are able to retrieve the device, we cannot confirm that this
incident involves the new Note 7,” company representatives wrote to
journalists repeatedly.
Investigators from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC),
the federal agency whose job it is to test faulty and dangerous products,