“The most disturbing part of this is that Klering’s phone caught fire on
Tuesday”—one day before the Southwest flight—“and Samsung knew
about it and didn’t say anything,” wrote The Verge’s Jordan Golson.
Warned Gizmodo’s Rhett Jones: “The evidence suggests that Samsung...
now appears to be suppressing the information that replacements are
dangerous.”
The reports continued to stream in with no decisive statement or action
from Samsung.
A woman in Taiwan was walking her dog when her Galaxy Note 7
caught fire in her back pocket. In Virginia, another replacement Note 7
ignited on Shawn Minter’s nightstand at five forty-five in the morning.
“It filled my bedroom with...smoke. I woke up in complete panic.”
After the incident, Mintner visited the local Sprint store, where a
salesperson offered him another Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Um, thanks but
no thanks?
Then, hours later, another Galaxy Note 7 owned by an eight-year-old
girl in Texas caught fire at a lunch table. Regulators, journalists, and the
public were looking for answers from Samsung. Puzzled by the inaction of
the global powerhouse, Samsung’s carrier partners started abandoning the
company’s products. AT&T announced on October 9, four days after the
evacuation of the Southwest Airlines flight, that it was discontinuing all
sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note 7. Other carriers followed suit.