Bad Day for Samsung as Furious Customers Say Their AI Fridges Failed and Food Went Bad
Twenty kilograms of food went into the trash in one South Korean home, according to a post on Samsung’s own community forum, just days before one of the country’s biggest holidays. The refrigerator meant to protect that food had been bought only months earlier. It had stopped cooling. Other owners described the same scene: dark interiors, frozen screens, groceries slowly warming. Nearly all of them had done one thing shortly before the trouble began, and the company had suggested it.
Dozens of Posts Flood Samsung’s Forum on September 22 as Smart Fridges Drop Offline
Complaints began piling up on September 22, when owners of Samsung’s Bespoke AI refrigerators started posting on the company’s community board. Customers reported interior lights that would not switch on, cooling and freezing that had quit, and screens stuck on update messages. Inside the SmartThings app, the appliances showed as offline. Most of the posts named the same product line. Owners reached for the obvious fixes first, the ones any frustrated person would try.
“Samsung Told Me to Update, So I Did”: Owner Says Spring Purchase Is Already Dead
One customer, in a post translated from Korean, wrote: “Samsung told me to update, so I did, but it broke down.” The fridge had been purchased that spring. According to the same post, meat and other groceries were close to spoiling, and the owner wanted to know where to claim compensation and when a repair would happen. Both questions went out to a public forum read by thousands of other owners in the same position, and neither had an answer yet.
Restarting and Re-Pairing Fail to Revive Bespoke AI 4-Door Fridges Released Since 2024
The affected units were mainly Samsung’s Bespoke AI 4-Door refrigerators released in 2024 or later, a premium line sold on its smart features. Owners said that unplugging and restarting the appliance changed nothing. Removing the fridge from SmartThings and adding it back changed nothing either, according to TechRadar. The only reported route to a working fridge was a technician visit, which meant owners were now dependent on a service calendar.
Earliest Repair Slots Land After Chuseok, With One Owner Quoted an October 1 Appointment
Chuseok, Korea’s mid-autumn harvest festival, began Thursday, and families traditionally fill their refrigerators for ancestral meals. Several owners said the first available service dates came after the holiday ended. One said the earliest slot was October 1. Another reported being told by Samsung that fast action was impossible because staff had already gone home for the break. By then, food bought for the feast was warming in the dark, and the company had said little in public.
Samsung Forum Moderator Acknowledges Outage and Calls the Fix a Top Priority
On Wednesday, a moderator on the community forum confirmed the outage. The post said an error occurred on September 22 during a software update process and that some customers were seeing abnormal behavior in their refrigerator’s power and screen. The company said it was taking emergency measures as a top priority and would try to prevent losses during the holiday. One detail in the statement stood out: it referred to a testing process, a stage customers are never supposed to see.
Internal Test Software Reached Customers’ Fridges by Mistake, Korean Media Reports
Korean outlet ZDNet Korea reported that the cause was a test version of the software that was distributed to ordinary customers by accident. Samsung described the incident as a deployment error rather than a hardware defect, stopped the rollout and apologized. Engineers were promised for the holiday period, and service staff were kept on duty for urgent cooling failures. Samsung told Fortune the issue was limited to South Korea, but a question remained open for the families who had already lost their food.
Samsung Reviews Compensation for Spoiled Food but Has Not Said How Many Fridges Were Hit
Seoul Economic Daily reported that Samsung planned to cover repair costs and was reviewing compensation for food that spoiled. Other outlets said no compensation policy had been announced at the time of their reports. Samsung has not disclosed how many refrigerators were affected. Some owners improvised in the meantime, with a few reportedly packing their fridges with dry ice to keep food cold until a technician could arrive. No figure has been published for either the damage or the payout.
Fridge Ad Pilot and “Screens Everywhere” Strategy Had Already Strained Owners’ Patience
Samsung’s smart fridges were controversial before this outage. In September 2025, the company began a pilot showing ads on the idle screens of some US Family Hub models, which angered many owners. Samsung executive Jeong Seung Moon has told The Verge that a screen can serve as a “central control hub” for the home. A December 2025 survey of 5,000 US homeowners by Vivant found 85% own at least one smart home device. Skeptics of the strategy gained a vivid new example this week.
A Routine Software Update Turned Into a Food Safety Problem for Samsung Owners
A refrigerator has one job, and for affected owners a software update took it away. The mistake originated in Samsung’s own testing process, reached fridges bought as recently as spring, and landed when households had stocked up for a holiday. Samsung has apologized, halted the rollout and promised engineers. A repair visit can restore a machine but cannot bring back discarded food. The episode shows owners of connected appliances what an automatic update can cost.