In what sounds like a very bizarre story, Samsung has accused several LG Electronics employees, one of them a senior executive, of deliberately sabotaging and damaging washing machines in German retail stores. According to Samsung, the vandalism took place earlier this month, ahead of the major electronics trade fair, IFA 2014, in Berlin.
“It is very unfortunate that Samsung had to request that a high-ranking executive be investigated by the nation’s legal authorities, but this was inevitable, as we concluded that we had to get to the bottom of this incident,” Samsung said.
LG of course denies all accusation of deliberate sabotage and said the damage happened due to weak hinges. While the employees were checking out the competition models in a retail store, the hinges simply broke. After the German police were involved to mediate, LG announced that its employees were going to pay for the four damaged washing machines, though they only agreed responsibility to the damage on two of them.
“If our company had an intention to destroy products of a certain company to tarnish the image of the product, it would be common sense to not have our executives directly carry out such acts,” LG said in a statement. “We hope that this is not an attempt to damage our reputation.”
This is far from the first dispute between the two companies who compete against each other in most fields where electronics are involved, and it’s doubtful it will be the last. LG claim to be the world’s largest manufacturer of washing machines with Samsung coming in second.
Thank you The Telegraph for proving us with this information
Image courtesy of Samsung
I hardly think four damaged washing machines are going to bankrupt Samsung, it was probably a couple of LG employees who had a little bit too much of the ‘good sauce’ doing stupid things but it also doesn’t pay to air their dirty laundry in public (pun intended of course). What morons, I guess these meatheads are already forwarding their resumes to Bosch, Speed Queen, AEG, Miele etc.