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Samsung and LG have been slapped on the wrist to the tune of — wait for it — £25.5m for swindling customers with fake discounts on phones.
The South Korean Fair Trade Commission issued the price-fixing fine to several Korean companies, both handset builders and phone networks. The phone makers, including Samsung and LG, deliberately jacked up the prices of 209 phones so that the networks could offer them cheaper, creating the ilusion of a discount. Tricksy!
Samsung was clobbered with the biggest punishment, at £8m, which it will presumably pay with change fished out of the back of the sofa in the lobby of Samsung Towers. Check out our informative and entertaining video about the fascinating history of Samsung to see just how big and crazily diverse the company is:
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History of Samsung
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European regulators are currently investigating whether Euro networks have ganged up to form similar cartels and bilk us out of money for new phones. The European Commission has asked Deutsche Telekom, France Télécom, Telefónica, Vodafone
and Telecom Italia to reveal what they discussed in meetings over the last two years. Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom are the bosses of Everything Everywhere — which operates here under the banners of Orange and T-Mobile — and Telefónica owns O2.
We really like Samsung’s slick, powerful Android phones. So it’s annoying when Samsung — or any company — acts like a git. How can we canoodle Google when it’s leeching our private data? How can we adore Apple when it’s busy being egregiously litigious? C’mon guys, it’s like you’re capitalist institutions motivated solely by money, and not the friendly gadget-buddies we’ve projected our hopes and dreams onto!
Does it affect your enjoyment of the latest gadgets to know that the companies behind them are up to no good, or do you just assume that every company you ever deal with is a double-dealing wrong’un? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.
