“Never update your Samsung refrigerator!” The line comes from a forum member on Samsung Members, the company’s community board in South Korea, and it caught the mood that week. On the afternoon of September 22, owners of Samsung smart fridges tapped an update prompt in the SmartThings app. Then, they said, the fridge went dead.
Ars Technica relayed Korean reports describing the symptoms: the appliances “suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after” the update attempt, and the SmartThings app then showed them offline. Some displays sat frozen on a message saying the app was being checked during the update. One owner wrote that the cooling itself had failed, so all the food inside had to be thrown away. Notebookcheck, citing Star News Korea and SBS, described people coming home to find the interior light off, the touch panel dead and the cold gone. Pulling the plug and restoring power changed nothing for several of them.
Which fridges, and what went wrong
Most of the affected units belong to the Bespoke AI 4-Door series, launched from 2024 onward. ZDNet Korea reported that a system error pushed internal test software out to customers. Samsung’s own account to Ars Technica was that an error occurred in internal testing of a refrigerator software update, that it suspended the testing as soon as reports arrived, and that the problem was limited to Korea with no impact identified overseas. The company said it had activated an emergency response protocol. It did not tell Ars how many units were hit or how it would prevent a repeat. SBS Korea reported that customers had filed hundreds of cases.
A holiday week
The timing made it worse. Chuseok, the autumn harvest holiday built around large family meals, started that Thursday. Some owners said they would have to dump their holiday food.
Repairs became their own complaint. One customer said a service centre told them a visit could not happen until after the holiday, and forum users said agents had warned of limited technicians, with a repair possibly not available until October. Another owner wrote: “The customers who bought Samsung refrigerators have had their holidays completely ruined, while those Samsung employees are just having a good time at home.”
Samsung apologized publicly and asked owners to book an engineer visit, since a technician has to inspect each unit in person. It advised moving food into ice boxes meanwhile, though some owners said the booking system was struggling under the load. ZDNet Korea reported that Samsung aimed to have some fridges fixed by September 24, and Samsung Electronics Service said it would keep engineers and call centre staff on duty over the break for urgent cooling failures, with SBS citing September 26 and 27. In a forum post, a Samsung representative promised to “do our best to ensure that our customers do not suffer any losses during the Chuseok holiday period.”
No compensation for spoiled food has been announced, and Samsung has not said how many refrigerators are affected. Some owners packed their fridges with dry ice to get through the holiday.
Sources
- "The refrigerator is dead": Samsung's AI fridges shut down after update, causes outrage – Notebookcheck News
- Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges – Ars Technica
