Samsung's Bespoke AI refrigerators in Korea were knocked offline and stopped cooling after a firmware update went wrong, leaving owners to throw out spoiled food days before a major holiday. The problems were first reported by Korean outlets including Star News Korea, which said most of the affected devices were four-door models from 2024 or later.
According to Star News Korea, the fridges lost power and stopped working right after users tried to push a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung's smart home platform. The SmartThings app then listed the refrigerators as offline, and some owners said the internal display was frozen on a message telling them to check the SmartThings app during the update. Samsung's Korean community forum has drawn numerous complaints, with some users saying their refrigerators were a year old or less.
One forum user wrote that the cooling functions did not work properly, forcing the disposal of all the food inside. Samsung said the failure happened on the afternoon of September 22 because of an error during its internal testing tied to a refrigerator software update, and that it halted the testing as soon as reports came in. The company activated an emergency response protocol, and its service centers are taking immediate action. A Samsung representative later posted on the forum that abnormal symptoms had appeared in the power and screen of some customers' refrigerators and urged affected owners to contact a service center.
Samsung did not answer questions about how many units were affected or what it will do to prevent a repeat. SBS Korea reported that customers have filed hundreds of cases, and ZDNET Korea reported that Samsung is aiming to have some refrigerators fixed by September 24. So far the issue has been confined to Korea, with no impact identified in overseas markets, including the United States.
The timing has sharpened the frustration because the failures landed during Chuseok, the autumn harvest holiday that began Thursday. Forum users complained that support agents initially said few technicians and executives were available and that a repair visit might not come until October, and one wrote that customers who trusted Samsung with an official update had their holidays ruined. Another forum member's exasperated conclusion: never update a Samsung refrigerator.
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